Lecturer Calls For Monitoring Of Agric Activities

Against the backdrop
of the belief in some quarters that there was a drop in farming activities due to the fear of another flood in 2013, especially in the Niger Delta area of the country, a university teacher, Dr. Steve Wordu has said that such opinion had no reliable basis.
Dr. Wordu of the Department of Sociology in the University of Port Harcourt who spoke to our correspondent recently in Port Harcourt said one of the major problems bedeviling the sector was the lack of monitoring of agric activities in the rural areas.
He said that it was not proper to assume that farmers did not plant for fear of the much publicized flood of 2013.
According to him, since there was no statistics done by the relevant agric agencies like the Ministry of Agriculture, FADAMA and the Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) among others it was dangerous to assume that nothing happened throughout the farming period.
“We do not have statistics to say that farmers did not pant or farmers were skeptical because of flooding.
“There is no empherical evidence to show that actually farmers did not plant because that there is shortage of food or not”, he said.
Explaining further, Dr. Wordu said however, if seasonal planting was withheld it would impact negatively on agric production, “which means there will be shortage of food”.
He said such a situation would create rise in prices of commodities especially at festive seasons.
On the possibility that most farmers did not plant, Dr. Wordu still maintained that since there was no authoritative information to the contrary, it was not safe to link such thinking to flooding.
While alluding to the fact that the 2012 flooding destroyed seed plants, that is those expected to be replanted, the need for recommendations after the flooding was imperative.
This according to him was for government to provide seedlings and other inputs even as he said if government did not do that there would be problems in terms of replanting.

Representative of Minister of State for FCT, Alhaji Olajire Obisesan (left), presenting keys to tractors and a bus to chairman, All Farmers Association of Nigeria, Mr Olumide Ayinla, at the presentation of farming tools to farmers by the Minister, Oloye Olajumoke Akinjide in Ibadan, recently.