The vice-chairman, Osun All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Ganiyu Musefiu, says farmers are in dire need of government’s financial assistance to boost food production.

Mr Musefiu said this in an interview with journalists in Osogbo, on Thursday.

He said that a lot of factors were militating against farmers’ potential to produce enough food for the country.

He argued that farmers required adequate financial support to overcome the challenges hampering high productivity.

The AFAN chieftain said: “Climate change affects planting and harvesting, which cumulate in low food production.

“Farmers receive little to no financial assistance from government for their farming and this equally affects our output.

“Also, farmers are so few in number to produce enough food to cater for the country’s large population.”

Mr Musefiu decried the inability of farmers in Osun to access facilities, saying that the development was a huge setback on food production in the state.

According to him, the state government stopped giving loans to farmers because of the alleged failure by beneficiaries in the past to repay.

He appealed to the government to have a rethink because the policy was seriously affecting farming and food production in the state.

“Some loans were given to some famers in the past and they could not pay back, so Government stopped giving loans to farmers.

“Government needs to reconsider its policy and find out the reason those farmers given the loans then defaulted.

“The fact that loans given to farmers in the past were not repaid should not make government to stop giving new loans to farmers,” Mr Musefiu said.

He contended that Osun farmers were struggling to remain in business and that most of them with limited resources “are finding it difficult to maximise production.

“It has not been easy for so many to continue their farming business, especially in this era, where farmers pay between N25,000 and N30,000 to hire tractors to clear an acre of land.

“Unless government assists us, most farmers in the state would only engage in small scale farming, thereby limiting their potential to produce more food.

“Paucity of funds is a major reason food could not be produced on a larger scale and this has been affecting the state,” he said.

He also pointed out that farmers could not continue to use primitive farming implements and expect a boost in food production.

Mr Musefiu also said that farmers needed periodic training in new farming methods and hybrid seedlings for higher yields.

“Meaning that farmers need to be educated to be knowledgeable about them,” he said.

He gave kudos to the northern farmers and governments that had taken farming as a serious business, “to the extent that their governors, senators and lawmakers are going into farming”.

He said the only way to truly tackle hunger, poverty and unemployment in Nigeria was for government to prioritise and invest more in agriculture.

 (NAN)