The Federation of Agricultural
Commodity Association of Nigeria (FACAN), has cautioned the Federal Government
against the proposed re-establishment of commodity marketing boards.

The National President of the body, Dr Victor Iyama, gave the
advice in an interview in Lagos.

Iyama said that setting up of the commodity boards as they
were in those days was not the best solution to tackling the challenges facing
farmers.

He said the commodity board as it was constituted before the
abolition of it in1986 is not the solution. It shouldn’t be a board. If we look
at probable good aspect, which some of the advocates are advancing, is in terms
of standardisation of Nigerian agricultural commodities.

“That, I strongly believe, can be done by the associations
and FACAN, though, they said that it would be private sector control and public
sector enabled, but if they want to form a body, the body should never be
involved in buying and selling of any commodity because if you are involved in
buying and selling, then you will start talking about price control. “You will
start attempting to dictate the price at which the farmers sell, which will of
course go against the principle of liberalisation and of course the farmers
won’t be happy with it,’’ he added.

Iyama said that various commodity association had been
working to ensure standardisation and control, adding that establishing a board
for such purpose again would be duplication of efforts.

He said that what the government needed to do was to empower
the association made up of 37 different agricultural commodity associations.

According to him, what is needed is a body that can serve as
a market of last resort to mop up spoilt agriculture produce.

“What is actually needed is a body that could serve as a
market of last resort, to buy off the goods that are wasting from the farmers
which they could not sell due to infrastructural decay.

“There are so many farmers that are in places where it is so
difficult to take out their farm produce to the markets and at the end of the
day, it gets rotten and they lose money.

“There should be places, either warehouses or gamma
irradiation project that could be established.

“These are machines that can be used severally to preserve
all these commodities. They can put one in each of the six geopolitical
zones.’’

The FACAN president decried a situation where a large
quantity of farm produce such as onions, tomatoes, pepper, and yam were allowed
to rot away each year.

“If we can prevent wastages and lot of losses by our farmers,
it will go a long way to relief them of annual loses.

“The wastages are due to lack of preservation centres and
rural roads through which the farmers could evacuate their produce from the
farms.’’

The Tide
recalls that the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwunmi
Adesina, had in August 2012, announced government’s plan to re-introduce
commodity market boards.

Adesina had also said in Akure, Ondo State, that such boards
would ensure that farmers got the right prices for their produce.