Helping Farmers Eradicate Hunger

In 2016, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, made public the CBN’s and commercial bank’s initiative to grant N300 billion loan to the agricultural sector of the economy.
Good news, isn’t it? His explanation suggested that the commercial banks were to use some of their liquidity to grant new loans to the agricultural sector and its value chain.
The bankers committee, no doubt, had done this to demonstrate their support for the effort of the federal government to create employment and diversify the economy.
Almost three years down the line, the required impact of the very initiative of the federal government, is, to say the least, far from being felt. Reason being that portfolio and political farmers are at it again.
This set of farmers is known to always emerge from the blues whenever agricultural incentives are trumpeted. Their emergence had, at different times in history, frustrated many loan schemes.
Loans were never repaid because they were given to the wrong persons who never invested them. This had always futilised efforts in this direction as real farmers are not captured in the scheme.
Come to think of it, before the announcement of the release of the N300 billion loan scheme by the CBN, Nigerian farmers had at various seasons and regimes, come to terms with exciting headlines and news highlights. These ranged from tax incentives for farmers, to USDA grant for new farmers and ranchers, agricultural incentive programmes etc.
In all of these, while some farmers tell their stories of how they were financially stabilised through one agricultural programme or the other, others simply describe same as mere channels which administrators and their cohorts pass through to loot government’s treasury.
The differing views about the administration of agricultural incentive schemes do not contradict the fact that at various times in governance, there were programmes and initiatives orchestrated by the government, neither does it highlight the farmers’ ingratitude towards the government’s efforts at alleviating their plight.
No doubt, such were intended to assist local farmers to break even as well as contribute to the country’s gross national product (GNP).
The intervention of the world through the introduction of the eight (8) Millennium Development goals (MDGs), broken down into eighteen quantifiable targets, measured by forty eight (48) indicators is enough pointer to the fact that a responsible government is never at ease while its citizenry groans in abject poverty.
The aspect of the millennium development goals which is about the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, is such that can primarily be met through agriculture. And as the foremost of the basic human needs, this can only be actualized if all the actors work together and play well their parts.
Apart from being seen to be helping farmers who happen to be major actors in the play, the burden of poverty alleviation and eradication of extreme hunger is enormous to be left in the care of the farmers alone.
From drought, extreme heat, to sea level rise and flood, the farmer, especially the small scale farmer, is on the frontline of climate change which every extreme case drastically affects livelihood and yields.
As weather patterns become obviously the more unpredictable, the farmers must not be abandoned to their fate, else the undesirable would be their portion.
Thus, to help farmers source for viable crops and adapt to climate changes, interventionary measures must not be compromised. Efforts of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, ( IFAD), Food Agricultural Development and Management Agency (FADAMA), and series of agricultural development programmes, must be felt by rural farmers in the South-South geopolitical region of the country.
What this implies is that the agricultural mileage in Nigeria should no longer be evaluated on the basis of the number of interventionist schemes so far flown, but on the impact so made.
Hence, of great importance is the interest placed on who manages what funds and initiatives. May I re-echo that those who can meet up with bank’s requirements for agricultural loans in the South-South geopolitical region are more of the portfolio/ political farmers.
While Emefiele calls on all hands to be on deck to boost power and transportation so that banks would achieve the goal of improving the economy, the writer is of the view that corruption in the agricultural sector can be checked by setting aside bogus and stringent requirements for securing loans.
Of greater importance is the emphasis on farm site visitation, so as to see what the farmer has on the ground with a view to seeing how he can be helped. Adequate monitoring of the farm to ensure a realisation of the intention of the scheme cannot be overlooked.
If agriculture in Nigeria must be taken to the next level, then now is the time to visit the real farmers’ farms and not cataloguing unattainable paper requirements that can hardly be decoded by the local farmers.

Sylvia ThankGod-Amadi