Produce theft upsets farmers, many count losses

“My kids and I went to the field to harvest rice. We worked all day, but we were unable to bag the paddy before sunset, so we decided to wait until the next morning to do the bagging and get a vehicle to transport it home. But when we arrived at the farm early the […]

“My kids and I went to the field to harvest rice. We worked all day, but we were unable to bag the paddy before sunset, so we decided to wait until the next morning to do the bagging and get a vehicle to transport it home. But when we arrived at the farm early the following morning, everything we had endured to do the day before was gone. I was shocked at what transpired. What they stole was more than seven bags,” 

Dole John, a rice farmer in Idadu, Nasarawa State’s Doma LGA, relates his sad experience to Daily Trust last week.

With a bag presently selling for more than N75,000, depending on how many kilograms it weighs, Dole calculated his loss to be more than N525,000. He was yet to recover from what transpired because more than half of everything he worked for during the season as far as rice is concern, is gone.

Like Mr Dole’s experience, smallholders are at risk due to the widespread problem of food theft in farms throughout the state, especially in rural areas.

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Another farmer, Okpowudu Audu, told this reporter that when robbers showed up at their farms, they were armed and started shooting to frighten them and other farmers away while stealing harvests.

 “There’s nothing we can do. If they discover you are harvesting, they will come around the farm at night to see if what you harvested is still there or if you have carried it all. What they see, they will take away.

“I heard gunshots around my neighbour’s farm in the middle of the night and presumed they had killed him. We couldn’t go to check since we were so terrified. Fortunately, he was not there, so they took his rice with them,” he said.

In many villages in Awe, Obi and Lafia, farmers who spoke with Daily Trust expressed concern over the spate of harvest theft with three crops being the main target: sesame, rice and yam.

Obadiah Attah, a sesame farmer, has been sleeping in the bush surrounding his farmer to protect it from farm robbers.

Sesame growers are more likely to lose their crops, particularly in Nasarawa State, because the cash crop has a high market value.

A few weeks ago, a bag could fetch a farmer more than N350, 000 at N3,500 per kg, with some bags weighing up to 127kg.

The harvest of sesame and rice is already underway, and many farmers are not sleeping well. The bandits are increasingly armed, forcing some farmers to resort to prayers.

 “This is the reason why I don’t want to cultivate sesame here. I don’t want anybody to kill me because whether you like it or not, you have to guard it overnight until it is due for extracting the seeds,” Ishaya Tamaiko said.

For yam producers, the yam on the farm is not their property “until it gets home,” as one farmer puts it. The market price for yam also encourages stealing.

 “Those stealing are even monitoring the farmers’ movements to know when they are likely to go to farm or not. It is a difficult situation for some farmers. The situation is better with farmers that are located near residential homes. Those in areas located far from homes are usually the target,” a yam farmer, Egube  Adagba in Agyaragu town, stated.

With current crop prices, many farmers are likely to lose a portion of their harvests to theft, as bandits comb locations that make tracking difficult, particularly in remote areas.

Also, in the Federal Capital Territory and other peri-urban areas, farmers face the possibility of losing some of their beans harvest this season.

Already, several farmers have reported that thieves have taken portions of their early developing beans in Karshi, Masaka, and other nearby locations during the night.

“One of my farms was affected but not much. I have also been hearing from some of our friends of the same thing. The problem is more common this year. Nobody gathers any harvest inside the farm again; these guys (thieves) will clear everything,” Danladi Yakubu, a farmer in Auta Balefi, in Karu LGA of Nasarawa State, said.

Beans, currently sell above N3,000 per mudu (a small dish, which serve as unit of measurement commonly used in Nigeria –some slightly above 1kg) across most markets in and around Abuja, Nasarawa and Niger states.

Even livestock farmers are not speared as their homes are now been invaded to steal animals.

Abubakar Abdullahi who resides in Dutse Alhaji in Bwari Area Council of the FCT, lost three big rams last week when some people invaded his house in the middle of the night and took away his rams.

The rams are good breeds, which could fetch the farmer more than N600,000 each during the Eid-Kabir.

Since Thursday, when the incident happened, Malam Abdullahi has never been himself.

Goats, chickens are also disappearing from smallholder bans said Mrs Aisha Tenimu whose goat was stolen and two kids left, adding “That goat gives birth to two kids each time.”

She said one of her goats was sold for N75,000 two weeks before the theft incident.

“If you allow your animals to roam around, you will wake up one morning and realize some or all of them are gone,” she said.

Since most rural communities in the country do not have the presence of security personnel, they are more susceptible to banditry and theft, which now rob them of their harvests.

Small-scale farmers are not only afraid of bandits who go around killing them, they are been confronted by people who move from farm-to-farm looking for what to steal.

Everything is now a target for robbery due to the present market pricing for livestock and farm produce.