Farmers urged to form cooperatives

The minister stated this recently in Lokoja during a two -day workshop on financial linkage services for rural farmers in North Central region. Akinwumi who was represented by the North Central Regional Director in the ministry, Engineer Sunday Oduma Edibo, said the workshop was to sensitise the farmers on the need to form cooperative groups […]

The minister stated this recently in Lokoja during a two -day workshop on financial linkage services for rural farmers in North Central region.
Akinwumi who was represented by the North Central Regional Director in the ministry, Engineer Sunday Oduma Edibo, said the workshop was to sensitise the farmers on the need to form cooperative groups so that they can access credit facilities from financial institutions as well as government.
According to him, the cooperatives they are encouraging farmers to form now are along the commodity value chain, saying the problem of lack of access to loans by farmers is being looked into by the minister to enable them to get money they needed during the farming season.
“With this workshop, the small scale farmers will have access to credit facilities that will help them to boost production.
“We have assembled commercial banks, bank of agriculture and microfinance bank that will come to the aid of the farmers. Banks have seen that farmers always pay back their loans, hence they are now willing to assist,” he said
He explained that the reason why the youth do not want to involve in farming was due to hard labour involved in it, saying that government is now encouraging mechanized farming so that the youth can venture into farming.
He however called on participants to take the workshop seriously as the minister is already working out how the government would assist them to get credit facilities to boost their production.