In Nigeria, smallholder women farmers take part in all aspects of agriculture; from husbandry to processing and distribution.These they do amidst many challenges and impractical government interventions, which NURUDEEN ALIMI captures in this report after visiting smallholder women farmers in five local government areas in Oyo State: Orelope, Atisbo, Ogo-Oluwa, Oyo West and Afijio.
OLUBUNMI Atinsola is the unofficial breadwinner of her family. She shoulders this responsibility by engaging in small scale farming in Elekunkun, a village in Illora community located in Afijio Local Government Area in Oyo State.
Atinsola’s work does not stop at cultivation, she must transport her farm produce to the local market to sell retail. The business earns her money barely enough to feed, clothe and cater for her children’s education.
With no insurance against her farm or produce, she is always one strike away from possible disaster and abject poverty.
She is not alone. Small scale farmers in Nigeria are vulnerable to what the English-speaking world calls ‘act of God’. They have no shield against natural disaster and the effects of climate change. Worse still, most of them they say they get no assistance from government at all in this very volatile business.
Because of age long patriarchal and cultural norms, many women farmers do not own or have access to land to cultivate. Some work as paid labourers on other people’s farm and they often still have to supplement their income by working as vendors, food processors and cooks.
These women have little access to strong, consistent relationships with buyers, finance and agronomics training. They are often excluded from decision-making, and do not have equal access to land nor farmer extension services and inputs such as seeds, chemicals and fertilizer.
Yet, women are an essential component of agriculture in developing countries, comprising an estimated of67 per cent of the agricultural labour force, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Finding solutions for these farmers means promoting food security, climate stability, biodiversity conservation and rural employment.
It has been estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organisation [FAO] that if women globally had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase theirfarms yields by 20-30 per cent, thereby increasing incomesand decreasing hunger by 12-17 per cent.This can raise the total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5-4 per cent.
Women farmers, under the aegis of Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON), in their charter of demand presented to the Minister of Women Affairs & Social Development, Dame Pauline Tallen on Friday November 29 2019, for onward transmission to the Federal Executive Council stated that:
Despite these demands from government, women farmers are still plagued by the problem of insecurity, non-availability of funds, lack of access to modern farming equipment among others.
Investing in women like Atinsola not only reduces the gender equality gaps, it will also impact positively on the economy at large. Why? Because women manage households and empowering them directly benefits their dependents.
Research by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), shows that women spend nearly 90 per cent of their income on food, health, clothing, and education for their family in comparison to men who spend about 40 per cent on same items.
The ‘multiplier effect’, is a term used by economists to demonstrate the impact that investing in women not only affects them individually, but also their family members, communities, and societies.
To maintain her farm, Atinsola like several other smallholder women farmers in her community, secures loans from microfinance banks. These loans come with high interest rate, she laments.
“We repay the borrowed money every week and if we do not pay at the scheduled time, we would have to run away from home and our farms,” she explains.
“Even as we speak, we are still repaying some loans,” she added.
Inability to pay means risking loss of collateral which is often the farmland.
To mitigate against such loss, the women have not looked to or waited for government but have taken the initiative to form a cooperative scheme that pulls funds together and pays for those whose loans are due. This, she said, is not always successful, as they sometimes cannot meet up.
Atinsola, who cultivates maize, cassava and vegetables,also observed that the government interventions are marred with politics and nepotism.
“We want the government to help usbut politicians who would claim they are distributing farm inputs and cash to farmers do not consider us, they would rather give all these things to women within their party who are not farmers,” shealleged.
She firmly believes making these government interventions like seedlings, fertilisers available -free or subsidised – to actual farmers will boost the nation’s food sufficiency drive.
“We have seen government representatives come to us on series of occasions to ask us how they can be of assistance. We would tell them, they would promise to assist us, but we would not see them again.”
To make the jobs of Olubunmi Atinsola and her co-women farmers easy, the World Bank recommended that state and federal authorities would have to increase the allocation to agriculture as a key growth driver of the Nigerian economy to not less than at least half of the Malabo/Maputo commitment of 10 per cent of the overall budget.
Accordingly, the budget should provide for gender friendly machinery and equipment such as hand sprayers, power tillers, ploughs, planters etc., especially low cost and locally fabricated equipment, which can be easily maintained by local artisans.
These should be in addition to improved seeds, seedlings, fertilisers, pesticides, feeds, animal stock, storage facilities, rural road networks, irrigation facilities, extension services including meteorological information through various platforms including print and electronic media especially radio and television as well as digital media and training of trainers.
In 2020, Oyo state budgeted N17 million as capital expenditure for the purchase of agricultural equipment. This is over 95 per cent less from the previous year, 2019 when N359 million was appropriated for the same purpose.
Furthermore, N37 million was appropriated for constituency project/ empowerment programme in 2020, this is over 84 per cent reduction from the N235 million approved in 2019.
The sum of N7,600,000,000.00 was said to have been approved for empowerment and agriculture scheme in the year 2020. However, whether there was provision for such in 2019 was not stated in the breakdown.
Same drastic reduction can also be seen in the production of farm seedlings which had N2.5 million in 2020, whereas the 2019 amount was over 4 times higher at N13 million. This represents a decrease of over 80 per cent.
If the government is not earmarking money for agriculture, then the already limited resources that smallholder women farmer like Atinsola had access to becomes almost nonexistent.
About 35 kilometres away from Elekunkun village, another smallholder women farmer,Tawakalitu Ishola, is not shielded from the numerous challenges facing Atinsola.
Ishola’s farm is in Erelu, a community in Oyo West Local Government Area where she and numerous other farmers were fortunate to have acquired the skills to use modern women-friendly farm equipment but they lack the resources to purchase such gear for their business.
“We lack modern women-friendly farming equipment. I and some of my co-women farmers know how to use them but lack of money to buy them. If we have the opportunity to have these tools, our work on the farms would be seamless as this would also encourage us to put in more efforts on the farm so that there would be abundance in terms of food production,” Ishola noted
She said the challenges do not stop at lack of modern women friendly equipment.Another hurdle is purchasing chemicals to treat the farmland and then there is also the need for fertiliser alongside other family responsibilities. There seems to be no relief in sight.
Crossing all these hurdles does not spell victory for Ishola as she would still have to contend with the inefficient transport system to move her produce some 27kms from the farm to the market.
“Before, we make use of taxi. But now, it is motorcycle that conveys us to and from the farm.
“If we want to move our seedlings to the farm, we have to look for a vehicle to take us. At times, we do face a lot of disappointment from the vehicle drivers. They may tell us they are coming and we would not see them until hours later.”
Transportation is a challenge. Ishola firmly believes the government can tackle this, and she has practical solutions. Vehicles can be provided, she said, and placed under the care of the zonal associations of smallholder women farmers, to help rural women farmers move their produce.
Another problem being faced by women farmers is the issue of getting their farm produce to the off takers. Majority of them find it extremely difficult to get these produce to buyers as there are no designated marketplace to sell.
“We usually go to where people who make garri and other food staples from cassava to inform them of the availability of cassava for sale. Also, we do tell those drivers who transport our farm produce to help us inform those who need cassava. Invariably, they are the ones who bring customers for us. Having a marketplace designed exclusively for farmers won’t be a bad idea and I believe the government can do it”
In recent times communities across Nigeria are battling with clashes which often result from herders’ cattle destroying farmlands.
Women farmers are not left out from the negative ripple effects. OlubunmiArilomo, a farmer in Oke-Aparo, near Alakuko village in AtisboLocal Government Area observed that some herders intentionally take their cattle to pasture on people’s farmland.
“Look at this cassava farm,” she said, pointing to a farm, “all the cassava there were consumed by cattle which were deliberately brought here by the herdsmen. I am sure you can see their faeces on the ground. At times, they pluck cashew for the cattle to eat as well.”
She noted that she has been a victim of such multiple times. Confronting the herders is out of the question as they “would brandish cutlass and threaten to inflict injury”.
Reporting to the Police has yielded no fruit either.
“If we report them at the police station they would not do anything about it. They would only ask us to be coming to the stationevery day. The experience has not been a palatable ,we have recorded huge loss as a result of the activities of herdsmen. We want the government to please help us by asking the law enforcement agents to step up their game as far as checking the nefarious activities of these herdsmen is concerned.”
Aside the invasion of her farmland, Arilomo is also being confronted by the challenge of climate change which she said made her lose over N100,000 in the last farming season.
She narrated how she invested N150,000 on her maize plantation but could only get N10,000.Reason? Rain did not come as expected.
“The Oyo State government supported us with maize seedlings and only a few of us had the opportunity of getting it. Unfortunately, the maize did not do well so we could not get anything to harvest because rain did not come at the time it supposed to.
“Last year, I spent N150,000 on series of cultivation, but I was able to make only N10,000 out of it. Is that not a loss?The N150,000 is exclusive of clearing the farmland, treatment and other expenses. I later planted melon too, still, I could not get anything from it because of the effect of climate change.”
Arilomo is holding on and hopeful that help will come for farmers like her. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in line with its developmental function established the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP). The programme which was launched by President MuhammaduBuhari in 2015, is primarily intended to make the provision of farm inputs in kind or cash to smallholder farmers to boost their production.
However, the story of Mary Oladunni, a smallholder woman farmer whose farm is at Awokun village in Orelope Local Government Area of Oyo State, suggested that the ABP has not in any way been beneficial to her. She does not have the required fund to access the scheme, she stated.
She said “The maize we got through the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) is sitting right there in their office, they said we are going to pay N100,000 before it can be handed over to us.Where do they expect us to raise that sum of money?. I believe such thing should be made easy as much as they could, for a smallholder farmer like me to raise such an amount of money is really a difficult task.”
As a result,Oladunni and other farmers looked for succor elsewhere. Help came in form of a microfinance loan or so they thought.
The women gathered their savings, including those they could get from friend and family and took to the bank. The bank had promised to give them loan upon the deposit of a particular amount of money.
Oladunni and several other women farmers were asked to pay the sum ofN60,000 to get a N250,000 loan. She lamented that the loan which they applied for sincethe year 2018 had not come as at the time the reporter visited her farm in May.
Smallholder women farmers generally do not have formal vocational education. They acquire farming skills informally while working on their farms. These have challenges in the application of modern farming techniques. The way out would have been vocational training centres.
Unfortunately, such services are not available to most of themand even when it is they still have to battle the male-centric society. Smallholder women farmers do not have access to many of the agricultural resources such as credits, inputs and productive assets as their male counterparts do. These restrict their progress in professional skills and even societal status.
In Ladanu village at Ogo-Oluwa Local Government Area, Arilomo wants to stay abreast with modern farming techniques but her husband would not permit her to attend such trainings.
“Anytime there is an opportunity for training, it is my husband who attends. He asks me to stay at home to care of the house. But I have decided to be attending, because I see that the trainings some of my co-women farmers attend have positive effect on them,” she narrated.
Arilomo said irrigation is anothersetback to her farming. She does not have boreholes so she is forced to pay “as much as N1,000 per trip to commercial motorcyclists to bring water down here”.
While reacting to submissions by the women farmers, Executive Assistant to the governor of Oyo State on Agribusiness, Debo Akande, stated that all the state’s agriculture projects have 30 per cent mandatory women or girls inclusion in its programme.
He said most of the government’s legacy programmes such as Start Them Early Programme (STEP), Youth Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness (YEAP) and Support to Women Entrepreneurship in the Agrifood Sector in Nigeria (SEFAN) are led by women.
He added that the annual input distribution by the state government hasa similar distribution towards female gender.
“I am not sure about the rationale for their submissions. What I am sure of are what we are doing with data to support it for example, Support to Women Entrepreneurship in the Agri-food sector in Nigeria (SWEAN) under the Oyo State agribusiness programme is working with 125 direct beneficiaries and at least 500 indirect beneficiaries by the end of the project in February, 2022.”
Akande, however, concluded:”It is a business to do agriculture like any other business. We all need to get fund commercially to do business, however, we have the agriculture credit cooperation of Oyo State that is available for their – success.”
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