Farmers Clamour For Access Roads To Curb Crop Waste

Local farmers in Umunomo Community in Ihitte Uboma Local Government Area of Imo, have called on the state government to construct roads that will connect farmers to markets as a panacea to crop wastage.
Some farmers who spoke to our correspondent on Thursday, said the community, like other agrarian communities in the state, produced major crops in large quantities.
The farmers, who produce cassava, yams, palm oil and cucumber among other crops in large quantities, expressed displeasure over their meagre sales and the huge losses recorded due to the lack of access to markets.
Mrs Caroline Nwokorie, a farmer and the official in charge of the Community Government Council (Women’s Wing), said her community needed good roads.
She noted that the lack of access roads made them to develop market stalls as part of their community development project through the World Bank-assisted Community and Social Development Programme.
‘’We choose market development because it is very important here since we produce a lot of crops.
‘’This community is one of the food baskets of the state but there is no way to carry the food outside to sell as much as we want, so we decided to build our own markets here to sell our crops,’’ she said.
Mrs Elizabeth Akpanaka, another women leader, also reiterated the demand for access roads to major markets.
‘’We don’t have any good roads to draw more market and it affects us a lot when our goods perish; so we need roads to open up our markets to the outside world.
‘’We produce cassava and palm oil in a large quantities; we produce even yams, cucumber, corn, oranges and other essential crop; so farmers need to be uplifted in this community,’’ she said.
The farmers, who said they rarely used fertiliser due to the fertile nature of their soil, however, reiterated the need for extension workers to propagate government’s innovative policies at the grassroots.
They told our correspondent that they had yet to be captured in the national farmers’ registration exercise.
“We are ignorant of the Growth Enhancement Support scheme of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda,” they said.