Union Boss Outlines Benefits Of Farmers’ Cooperatives

President, Etche Coop
eratives Union (ECU), Mr Godwin Akandu has called on farmers in Rivers State to register with farmers cooperatives to enable them benefit from the attendant incentives.
Akandu who spoke to our correspondent on Monday in Port Harcourt explained that it made for easier management and running of farmers’ affairs at any given time.
He said when loans and credit facilities were made available to farmers, it becomes easy to recover if one party defaults or dies.
“It is easier to recover loans when a member of a cooperative cannot meet up his or her obligation to the lending institution”, he said.
He explained that if people come together as a group and the government gives them loan it becomes less burdensome to manage such funds and make proper repayments even if one person dies.
According to Akandu, the reverse would be the case if the farmer was alone, even as he said individuals find it difficult to access credit facilities from banks and other financial institutions.
According to him, banks find it more comfortable in dealing with groups rather than individuals during the process of obtaining loans.
The ECU boss explained that forming a cooperative was not difficult since the number of persons needed ranges from 10 to 1000 per cooperative.
He further enumerated the benefits of belonging to cooperatives to include the operation of division of labour in the production process.
“Some people can now produce, some will process while others will sell the finished products”, he said.
He said this makes the process work efficiently and effectively with each member putting in their best to the overall benefit of all the members.
In order to check quack farmers, Akandu said there was a process put in place were farmers are made to take members of the cooperatives on a fact finding mission of their farms.
He said this was necessary because some people claim to own a farm but on closer observation it turns out that it was false.
On measures needed to check the so called port folio (political) farmers, Akandu opined that government should appoint qualified agriculturists to man such positions as commissioners and ministers of agriculture respectively.
“If Nigeria wants to properly diversify let it use the right people to run the agric sector.”