By Felicia imohimi
The Federal Government says it will continue to provide support to women farmers in order to enhance agricultural production and mitigate lingering challenges affecting food production.
Mrs Ifeoma Anyanwu, Deputy Director, Department of Gender Mainstreaming, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Services (FMAFS), made the pledge at a campaign by Small-scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON) on Friday in Abuja.
The campaign was aimed at promoting sustainable solutions to hunger and hardship in the country.
Anyanwu, who received a letter of demands addressed to the Minister of Agriculture from the farmers, said concerns of women farmers had been articulated under the agricultural programmes anchored in the six geopolitical zones.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that some of the demands by the farmers are agroecology support, security, access to credit and equity in the distribution of farm input.
The deputy director told the farmers that the minister and permanent Secretary were gender sensitive.
“They are passionate about addressing the concerns of women because it is the smallholder farmers who are predominantly feeding the nation.
“Without the women, there will not be food being the major producers in the country; they work tirelessly with their meagre resources to boost food production,” she said.
Mrs Ogechi Okebugwu, Programme Coordinator, SWOFON, said the campaign focused on high cost of food, security challenges affecting the women, access to credit by the farmers, agroecological support, among others.
Okebugwu said the ministry had supported the farmers through capacity building on best agricultural practices, distribution of inputs among others.
He said that the gesture was inadequate in addressing the current hardship and security challenges in the country.
Okebugwu, who decried the current hardship in the country, blamed it on subsidy removal from petroleum resulting to high cost of transporting food to the market, insecurity and climate change.
She said food was not something citizens should strive to get as it was the right of every individual to have access to food affordability and availability.
She said that farmers could not go to farm anymore for fear of kidnapping, adoption and rape.
“The ministry has always been supportive over the years; as Oliver twist, we still want more because we have not gotten to that level we want.
“We want to see that women have improved livelihood, increase food production, affordability, availability and accessibility of food by all the populace,’’ he said.
Mrs Comfort Sunday, Coordinator, FCT SWOFON, called for training of farmers on climate change mitigation strategies
“We need training on climate change mitigation; NiMet has predicted that there will be early seizure of rain this year.
“Government should provide us seedling to meet up with the target so that we the producers can get good yield,” she said.
NAN reports that the farmers held different placards with inscriptions ‘increase public investment in agriculture’, ‘provide grants and low interest rate credit’, ‘hardship is too much for us,’ ‘ provide palliative for us to cushion the impact. (NAN)