‘Give us fertiliser earlier please’…We get supply after our crops suffer

According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Oganisation, FAO, the smallholder farmers produce over 90% of the food that is consumed in Africa.In Nigeria, small-scale farmers constitute over 80% of the population. Most communities in the country are completely agrarian, producing different crops across different agro-ecological zones.From the desert planes of the northern states […]

According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Oganisation, FAO, the smallholder farmers produce over 90% of the food that is consumed in Africa.
In Nigeria, small-scale farmers constitute over 80% of the population. Most communities in the country are completely agrarian, producing different crops across different agro-ecological zones.
From the desert planes of the northern states through the Guinea savannah of the north central states to the swampy forest areas of the southern states, these farmers are smallholders who need significant inputs support from the federal, state and local governments to promote agricultural activities; especially now that government wants to take the pressure of unemployment away from them.
In an interview with some farmers in some villages and towns in Nasarawa State and Abuja, last week, many of the farmers decried the late distribution of the federal government Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES) fertiliser.
The GES- a scheme that allows the federal government to give smallholder farmers farm inputs such as seeds, seedlings and fertiliser directly through their mobile phones, thereby cutting out the activities of  middlemen – is meant to provide registered farmers with two bags of fertiliser each at 50% subsidy; the seeds at 90% subsidy and seedlings at 80%.
In Doma, some of the farmers who spoke with the reporter said the GES fertiliser came to them in July which, in their opinion, is late for farmers.
“You need this fertiliser early enough to help the crops grow when it is necessary. By this month we should expect that our crops are ripening at the farms, this is not when we begin to apply fertiliser,” Bitrus Tailer, a smallholder farmer in Idadu village in Ekye Development Area, told this reporter.
He displayed the text message sent to his mobile phone asking him to go for his fertiliser. “To me, this is late. But I am going to collect it against next year so that it will help me in the beginning of the season when we need the product most.”
At Igbabo and Yelwa-Idiya villages, farmers who received the product expressed gratitude to the federal government but were worried that the late distribution of the product is not helping them.
“Some of us cannot even afford the product when it comes because we would have spent almost all we have in the beginning of the farming season buying either pesticides or herbicidesto control pests and grasses,” one of the farmers said.
For Abdullahi Onawo in Doma town, “what is stopping the government from distributing the fertiliser in March or April?” he asked in apparently angry tone. “Our soil is exhausted and we need the fertiliser from the onset so that the crops can grow properly. But government will distribute the fertiliser in July when you are supposed to be harvesting some of the crops like maize.”
“Tell them to give us fertiliser earlier please if they really want to support poor farmers,” his wife, Lami, added her voice to the discussion.
Umar Musa who said he cultivates cassava, melon and maize,added that the price of fertiliser is too high for people like him to afford, adding that “in those days we bought fertiliser at N1,200 from government. Sometimes we got it lower than that. Today, they are asking poor people like me to pay N6,000 for the two bags. Where do I get that money from, especially this time when we have nothing to sell?”
The concerns expressed by farmers in Doma re-echoed in Nassarawa-Eggon and Akwanga where this reporter met some farmers. They said if the scheme is improved upon in terms of early fertiliser distribution, it will help the farmers.
They advocated that government should make the product available especially before the beginning of the farming season to enable farmers have access to it.
“June and July are the most difficult months for many smallholder farmers because we put whatever we have in the farm. So it will be difficult to have up to N6,000 for the fertiliser and by that time if your farm is not fertile, the crops would severely suffered,” Stephen Anjugu, a maize farmer stressed.
Some of the farmers want government to step up on the subsidy, stressing that many smallholder farmers, like women who are very active in farming in the country, cannot afford the product at that price.
“If government is selling to men at that price, we women should get it at N1,500 or at most N2,000 so that women who don’t have financial strength like men can also afford it,” Ramatu Danlami told Daily Trust in Akwanga.
For some of the smallholder farmers spoken to in Duste and Muko in Bwari area council of the FCT, government needs to bring down the price of the fertiliser so that every poor farmer can afford the product as that is the only way to help both smallholder and rural women farmers to remain engaged in agriculture as a business.