Tomato farms under pest attack in Katsina

After struggling with the poor price of fresh tomato in the last few months, farmers in Katsina State are now battling with fresh attack of tutaabsoluta that is gradually ravaging their tomato farms. The disease, which became prominent last year, affects the crop at both its nursery and maturity stages, damaging its leaves, stem and […]

After struggling with the poor price of fresh tomato in the last few months, farmers in Katsina State are now battling with fresh attack of tutaabsoluta that is gradually ravaging their tomato farms.
The disease, which became prominent last year, affects the crop at both its nursery and maturity stages, damaging its leaves, stem and the fruits.
A tomato farmer in Kafur Local Government Area, Malam Abdullahi Rufa’i, said tomato farmers in the area were not smiling this year as they struggled with poor market price of the commodity in the last three months and that now that the prices are high, they were battling pest attack.
“We have lost so much we invested in tomato farming this year. Initially we recorded no pest attack and the crop was so healthy and bore a lot of fruits, which resulted to a market glut that forced its price to crash.
Farmers were struggling for who to get buyers at N300 per big basket then but now that its price has skyrocketed to N12,500, the disease is seriously decimating the yield of the crop,” said Rufa’i.
He added that for over two months that he planted his tomato, he was yet to harvest even half a basket due to the pest attack, a situation that was seriously affecting his economic capability.
“You can imagine what we are going through after investing all we had and the returns are yet to be in sight,” he said.
Another farmer, Sahabi Maitakalma Bugawa, said with the current development,
tomato farming was likely to suffer a set back as many of its farmers have lost a lot this year.
“Poor pricing and the current pest attacks have resulted to the loss of huge capital by irrigation farmers this year which might adversely affect tomato cultivation next season. Farmers are gradually becoming frustrated, especially that a lasting solution to this devastating disease is yet to be found,” Maitakalma said.
He also said during the harvest period, in the last three months, about 15 trucks were loaded with tomatoes daily from Kafur irrigation dam but that now, only one or two J5 buses were being loaded as the commodity has been decimated by the pest.
When this reporter went round the irrigation farms in Kafur, he observed that over half of the tomato farms in the area were affected by the disease, a situation that has forced some of the farmers to remove the dying tomato plants and replace them with onions, okra, or cucumber.
The vice chairman of the Irrigation Farmers Association in Kafur LGA, Sama’ila Garba
Kafur, told this reporter that irrigation farming in general has over the years brought about succour to the teeming youth in the area, who were in the habit of travelling to the southern states for greener posture.
“Our youth now no longer travel out as they are busy round the year engaged in either rainy season or irrigation farming,” Garba said.
He called on the government and private agriculture companies to join hands in bringing about lasting solution to the devastating disease.
“There is need for government to take accurate statistics of tomato farmers in the state so that in the event of pest attack or any problem that may result to gross loss to the farmers, government can intervene and compensate the affected farmers as it does to poultry farmers affected by the bird flu,” the chairman said.