Wheat farmers angry, say Adesina failed them…Many may abandon production

Chairman of Water Users Association of Bakalori irrigation scheme, Malam Muhammad Rabiu, said farmers in the area had stopped cultivating wheat because of the difficulty associated with its production and the fact that wheat does not have an effective value chain where farmers can sell and make gain.“When Adesina visited Zamfara last year and paid […]

Chairman of Water Users Association of Bakalori irrigation scheme, Malam Muhammad Rabiu, said farmers in the area had stopped cultivating wheat because of the difficulty associated with its production and the fact that wheat does not have an effective value chain where farmers can sell and make gain.
“When Adesina visited Zamfara last year and paid a courtesy visit to Governor Abdulaziz Yari here in Talata Mafara in the evening and requested to meet the farmers, we told him that if he came for farmers then he should spend the night and visit the Bakalori Irrigation scheme the following morning and meet them in their farms. He agreed.
“At the farms the following morning, he told farmers to cultivate wheat massively adding that a value chain has been created for wheat. He promised to buy off the produce from us. Farmers scampered for wheat to plant. But several months after harvest he didn’t come!  When we complained he sent a team after many of us had been forced to sell our wheat at very low prices. Honestly speaking, I’m not happy,” Rabiu said.
Malam Sanni Ladan, is another wheat farmer at Bakalori who also recounted his ordeal. He said that he was disappointed, like many of his colleagues, over the way the minister made them spend the little they had in wheat production with the promise that the federal government will buy everything from them under the buyback policy which motivated them into massive wheat farming, but  ended up incurring serious loses.
According to Aliyu Zaki Mafara, the Secretary of Bakalori Water Users Association, wheat farmers at the irrigation farms produced over 2,000 bags of wheat each weighing 75 kilogrammes. With high expectation from the promises received from the minister, many farmers began to count their chicken before the eggs were hatched. The expectation that never was!
“Akinwumi stood before us and asked us how much we were willing to sell per bag. We told him N15, 000 and that we were expecting over 2,000 bags. He did the calculation himself and it amounted to about N25 million. He then told us that he will buy it all. We didn’t hear from him again until five months later when a team came and was bargaining with farmers at N12, 000 per bag after the minister himself promised to buy at N15, 000,” he said.
He said when the wheat farmers got tired of waiting for the minister to come and buy the wheat as promised with no one showing up, they took their produce to the market where they sold below production cost to address the financial pressures most of us were forced into following the delay in buying the produce.
“By the time the minister’s team came to buy the wheat from us, about five months after harvest, they met only 400 bags left from the over 2000 bags that we produced. They bought the 400 bags on the understanding that they will take it to a seed company in Kano to refine it into certified seed and bring same back to us so that we can plant this last season.
“When it was time for us to plant and we did not see them, we went and bought seeds from the market and planted. It was after our crops matured that they returned only 250 bags from the 400 bags to us. We could not plant the seeds they brought because they came late. Even as I speak with you, most of the 250 bags are now infected. It now crumbles into white powder due to poor storage,” he said.
Most of the wheat farmers that spoke to these reporters at Bakalori said the wheat they harvested during this year’s irrigation farming was still being kept by them months after harvest as the minister who told them that the wheat buyback policy is a continuous one is yet come back for the wheat.
“As I speak to you, the teams the minister sent to buy the 2,000 bags of wheat from us last year but got only 400 bags still owes us balance of our money for the 400 bags because they could not pay us complete. Look at several bags of wheat we harvested this year wasting away. No buyer and government refused to come and buy. Is that how to enhance production?
“You can see clearly how this government policy on agriculture is killing smallholder farmers. You have seen the wheat in the stores you visited wasting away just because the farmers accepted the minister’s promise. How are we going to recover these losses? Who will come and tell these farmers to go into mass production of wheat and they will listen to him again? Government is just not serious about agriculture,” he said.
At Argungu in Kebbi State, the story is the same as wheat farmers complained of lack of good prices for their produce and how difficult it was for them to make significant gains as good market remains a major challenge that may force them to abandon the product.
Alhaji Ismaila Argungu, chairman of the Argungu Wheat Farmers Association said although government promised to buy everything from them at good prices, they did not see any government official who came to buy their produce after harvest while the merchants who came to for the wheat offered prices far below production cost.
“The federal government is really discouraging wheat production in this part of the country. The land is there, the farmers are willing but there is no encouragement from government. There is a lot of insincerity going on in the system. It is unfortunate, to say the least.
“If government will buy this produce from us or link us to companies that will buy at good prices as it is done in some developed countries, it will encourage the farmers. As it is now, I am afraid some of our farmers may abandon wheat for vegetable,” Argungu said.