‘Farming has banished hunger from my home’

At  your age, you’re still actively farming.  What has kept you going?Mr. Bitrus Fenu: I have inspiration first of all from my name, ‘Fenu’, which in Gbagyi means servant of the people. I believe I have to serve my people until death comes. Besides, from childhood till now, I have not done any other job […]

At  your age, you’re still actively farming.  What has kept you going?
Mr. Bitrus Fenu: I have inspiration first of all from my name, ‘Fenu’, which in Gbagyi means servant of the people. I believe I have to serve my people until death comes. Besides, from childhood till now, I have not done any other job in my life, except farming. This is what my father taught me and he lived to see me in active farming, until 15 years ago when he joined his ancestors. Even when he could no longer work on the farm himself because of age, he would occasionally visit me on the farm to see what I was doing. So, Istill do farm work myself to kill boredom and provide food for my family and also my community.
Did your father sometimesoffer advice to you when he visitedyour farm?    
Fenu: Yes. Sometimes he would ask me where I wanted to make my yam heaps that year and I would show him. He would look at the soil texture and tell me whether it would be good for yam cropping or not. He wouldsay this portion is fertile and would be good for genuine corn or maize and that if I cultivated it, I would have a bumper harvest even if I didn’t apply fertiliser. He liked these crops and grains so much and I have taken after him.
What problems do you encounter farming at this age?
Fenu: You know that there are new systems of farming now which have made the work much easier, like the use of chemicals to kill weeds and so on. So, sometimes, I lack money to buy these chemicals and afford fertiliser to apply on my farms. It leads to bad harvest in some cases and instead of getting say 1,000 tubers of yam, you could get 500 or even less than what I was expecting.
Do you get discouraged because of these setbacks?
Fenu: No, no! In spite of everything I still continuewith the hope that another season would be better,but it is not every season that brings poor harvest. There are times I smile home with a bountiful harvest.  I can still remember this year which God gave me four pick-up van- loads of yams and guinea corn in bundles, which I loaded in three pick-up vans to the house. And all my crops that year gave me good harvest.  
In what ways can government assist farmers of your age to improve on their yields?
Fenu: We hardly see fertilisers and where we find it, it is expensive. It is the samestory for tractors and other farm inputs. As we talk, I still have the strength to engage in mechanised and commercial farming.  I know quite a number of us here who are willing.  You can see that my farm is large, because I use the little money I have to hire tractors. So, if government can provide these things for us or make agric loans or such facilities available to us to get these farm inputs, we shall farm a great deal. If government remembers farmers this way, we shall be happy. For now, we are not happy because our dream is to cultivate more every year, but we cannot do it because of these problems.
How many hours do you spend on the farm daily?
Fenu: Even now, I still stay in the farm from 8am to 4pm every day. Except on Sundays or if I am sick, I go to the farm every day, yet I don’t get tired.
How do you tackle hunger while on the farm for the long hours?
Fenu: I come with raw foodstuff and at about 12noon, I go under that tree (pointing at a tree) to either cook yams or roast maize to eat. After eating, I usually relax for like 30 minutes and then resume work, until it is time to close.
At what stage did you stop schooling?
Fenu: In primary school, but later in life, I attended adult education school. Now I can write my name and read Hausa language, because we were taught in Hausa. I attended the adult education school after I married, which is about 35 years ago.
You could not proceed with schooling, but some of your mates who furthered their education got government jobs. Do you envy them?
Fenu: I cannot envy my mates who went to school and got government jobs. I feel that is their calling and what God has destined for me is farming. I am happy that I am still strong at this age, which is a blessing in itself.  Some of them who are still alive are not as strong as I am. So, I have no reason to envy them. I only feel that if any one of them has something, he could assist me in my farm work, but the help hardly comes, but I am not bothered about it.
How many wives do you have?
Fenu: I have only one wife and my children who are still alive are six. The eldest called Emmanuel is 40-years-old and my last born is 18 years.
Does your wife assist you on the farm?
Fenu: Yes, she does. She also farms her own crops like beans, groundnuts, okro, soybeans and beniseed.   
What have you been able to achieve mainly with farming these years?
Fenu: Through farming, I can say I have achieved victory over hunger. I have banished hunger in my household. It is through the proceeds of farming that I have paid the school fees of my children. My eldest son teaches at one of the secondary schools at Bida. I have built a house with it and bought a motorcycle. I also bought a car with it. While I use the motorcycle to go to my farms, my sons are the ones who drive the car. My sons also follow me to the farm sometimes and even Emmanuel follows me to the farm anytime he comes home.
How has the ceding parts of Gbagyi land to Abuja affected farming by members of your community?
Fenu: It has affected us a lot. Now it is difficult for you to get large parcels of land to farm. The influx of people into these areas has made it impossible. I go as far as five kilometres to farm; that is why I use motorcycle to get to my farms.
How does your community handle disputes arising from land grabbing?
Fenu: When such problems arise, like it happened to me, when someone wanted to grab my farmland, I reported him. We take such cases to the council of elders in the community and it is resolved amicably, through witnesses.     
Youths are not interested in farming these days. What advice can you give them?
Fenu: It is not a good sign that the younger generation is turning their backs on farming. It means they are laying the foundation for hunger in the future. Youths should not forget farming. They should go to school to learn new agricultural technologies to improve on farming.