A professor in the Department of Agricultural Extension, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Tajudeen Bameke, has disclosed that the challenge posed by the high cost of foodstuffs can be eliminated if the activities of middlemen in the agricultural cycle are completely cut off.
While urging farmers to add value to their products to make more profit, Prof. Bameke said that when farmers process their agricultural produce through value addition, it would reduce exploitation by middlemen as well as the high cost of food in the market.
According to him, the activities of middlemen in the agricultural sector usually lead to a high cost of food, while real farmers make little profit from their produce.
He stated this during the training and empowerment of 3,000 smallholder, vulnerable farmers in the 12 states that make up the South-West and South-South geopolitical zones by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.
The training forms part of activities aimed at implementing the Agriculture for Food and Jobs Creation Programme (AFJP) under the national poverty reduction and growth scheme of the Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning.
The major objective of the programme was to take vulnerable smallholder farmers out of poverty by enhancing their productivity through the use of modern agricultural technologies.
The beneficiaries, who were drawn by the respective state ministries of agriculture and validated by the federal ministry, were supported with a conditional transfer of N15,000 and farm inputs to assist and improve their farm production and productivity.
The inputs distributed include Knapsack sprayers, organic fertilisers, herbicides, maize seeds, rice seeds, and vegetable seeds like tomato, pepper, and okra for homestead farming, as well as day-old chicks for poultry farmers and fish feeds for fish farmers.
Prof. Bameke and 11 other resource persons were drawn from the faculties of agriculture in select federal universities to take the farmers through good agricultural practices that will assist them in becoming successful commercial farmers.
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