•Smallholder women lament lack of access
From Wilson Okereke, Afikpo
Inadequate and untimely access to agricultural inputs have been identified as major impediments to the efforts of several smallholder women farmers towards achieving food sufficiency in Nigeria.
This is as smallholder women farmers in Ebonyi State alleged that those they classified as political agriculturists benefit from government inputs, to the detriment of real farmers.
The disclosure was contained in the report of a study “Community scorecard on smallholder women farmers access to agricultural/farm inputs in Ebonyi State,” conducted by a non-governmental organization known as Participatory Development Alternatives (PDA). The study was under the Scaling Up Public Investment in Agriculture (SUPIA) project, in partnership with Actionaid-Nigeria.
The report was presented by the PDA’s programme officer for the project, Ugochi Joseph, in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State.
According to the report that covers four years 2019 and 2022, a large number of women cooperative societies under smallholder women farmers’ organisations in Nigeria do not have access to agricultural inputs to enable them scale up their production. And regrettably where available, the inputs would either be misplaced against the needs of the farmers or released outside the seasons of their usefulness, thereby truncating their effectiveness.
It showed that 81 per cent of the smallholder women farmers who indicated their various cooperatives, regarding inputs disbursed by the government within the four years under review, did not get the items, while only 19% was successful.
“Nineteen per cent of smallholder women farmers affirmed that their various cooperatives accessed the inputs in July and August, 2022 while 81% of the groups said that they never accessed farm inputs at all.
“This means that farm inputs are not distributed on time and annually to support smallholder women farmers,” the report said.
It recommended, among other things, the need for government to integrate smallholder women in the design of inputs distribution model and suggested that the distribution of farm inputs should be done directly to the stakeholders at the grassroots rather than the state level so that the items could get to the targeted beneficiaries.
It also advised that there should be adequate budgetary allocation for farm inputs in the yearly agriculture budget adding that the State Ministry of Agriculture should work in synergy with Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON), Ebonyi State, and other Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to be able to reach the targeted farmers.
“Smallholder women farmer organizations and CSOs should be continually invited to participate in policy making processes to ensure that the proper needs of farmers are always captured,” it further said.
One of the representatives of SWOFON at the event, Mrs. Ifeoma Chukwu, frowned at a situation where government agricultural inputs usually land in the hands of those who do not actually need them.
“We are now in the farming period and we are supposed to have these farm inputs, which we have been talking about, but the people in charge will tell us that we have these agricultural representatives in our areas, whereas we do not normally see them.
“This is what they have been telling us, that they will give, but till the end of every season we don’t see anything and after sometime they tell us that they have distributed the farm inputs to some people who are not even farmers, indicating that the inputs are usually shared to “political agriculturists” at the expense of the real farmers,” she said.
Chukwu, however, commended PDA and Actionaid for assisting women farmers in Nigeria to realize their potential through their many programmes.
Permanent secretary, State Ministry of Agriculture, Mrs Patricia Okiri, represented by Chidimma Obiokoye, explained that her office has some policies already in place to integrate women farmers in its agricultural programmes. She named two of the policies as inauguration of extension officers and a desk officer for women farmers at the Ebonyi State Agricultural Development Programme (EBADEP).
She blamed climate change as another reason they sometimes do not get the inputs at the appropriate time, explaining that “when a forecast is made, nature will always take its course and when that happens it will alter all the plans made by the government.”
On increasing access to inputs, the head, Women in Agriculture Desk, EBADEP, Mrs. Favour Okouwa, advised the women farmers to always take advantage of their umbrella body to press home their demands with government. She also admonished them to increase advocacy visits to concerned ministries, departments and agencies.
The event offered CSOs, SWOFON, government officials and the media the opportunity to dialogue on the prospects and challenges of agriculture towards ending hunger in Nigeria by 2030 in line with Goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
