Farmers seek agric commodity marketing board

A group of farmers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has called on the Federal Government to establish Agriculture Commodity Marketing Board to help regulate arbitrary pricing of farm commodities. The farmers made the call during a meeting with the Programme Director of African Centre for Food, Agriculture and Sustainable Development (Afri-CASD), Bolaji Akindehinde in […]

A group of farmers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has called on the Federal Government to establish Agriculture Commodity Marketing Board to help regulate arbitrary pricing of farm commodities.
The farmers made the call during a meeting with the Programme Director of African Centre for Food, Agriculture and Sustainable Development (Afri-CASD), Bolaji Akindehinde in Abuja.
The farmers sought support of the centre to further advocate necessity of the board to increase food production and promote large scale farming, saying it was inappropriate for farmers to be at the mercy of buyers among other end users before farm harvests are sold.
A representative of the farmers, Mr. Sulieman Azeez said, “Farmers are suffering in this country. This is a country where the buyers fix the price for our farm produce. But if there is agriculture commodity marketing board, you cannot tell me you will buy my rice for N5 when everyone knows in the country that it is being regulated for sales for N10 across the country.
He said it is bad for farmers not to have control over sales of their farm produce.
In his remarks, Akindehinde disclosed that the erstwhile Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina showed the zeal to setup the commodity board but little was heard thereafter.