Oxfam Nigeria has raised serious concerns over the neglect of small holders farmers and its attendant effect on food sustainability in Nigeria, JOHN OBA, writes.
The federal government has several policies on agriculture that fails to address the plight of small holders farmers or are not implemented properly to suit the needs of the small holder farmers.
Small holder farmers are faced with several challenges further compounded by unfavourable policies and funding. These farmers are faced with challenges such as lack of support from local government councils (LGCs); lack of information, limited access to modern agricultural technology; lack and high cost of farm inputs; land tenure system; inadequate agricultural credit; lack of off takers; extension education needs, and agricultural credit constraint among other continue to be a drawback to small time farmers..
Poverty in Nigeria is particularly outrageous because it has been growing in the context of an expanding economy where a minority reap the benefits while the majority continue to wallow in poverty.
Annual economic growth in the early 2000 averaged over 7 per cent in the 2000, yet Nigeria is one of the few African countries where both the number and the share of people living below the national poverty line increased from 69 million in 2004 to 112 million in 2010 representing 69 per cent of the population, income inequality, as measured by the Gini Index, grew from 40 per cent in 2003 to 43 per cent in 2009.
But agriculture holds the most potential to speedily transform the nation’s mono-product economy into a varied one and large-scale agricultural industrialisation will guarantee food security, employment, equality and social inclusion, especially for women and young people. The ability of the sector to play this role depends on the political will of the government to increased investments in the sector, in line with Nigeria’s commitment to the Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa.
This will ensure adequate resources are available to small-scale farmers who produce over 80 per cenr of the food consumed in Nigeria, increasing productivity and employment, reducing poverty and ultimately enhancing food security for the continent’s most populous nation.
But in a press conference recently, Oxfam Nigeria raised concern over the level of poverty ravaging the nation and said majority of the poor people are farmers not because they don’t engage in farming but because most government policies has failed to lift them out of poverty.
Oxfam Country Director, Mr Constant Tchona, said economically, the majority of women are concentrated in casual, low-skilled, low-30 paid informal sector employment and they constitute 54 million of Nigeria’s estimated 78 million women that live in rural areas and off the land.
He said though agriculture remains the largest economic platform for women, it is mostly subsistence farming with hoes and cutlasses. He explained that women and other small farmers also remain at a disadvantage: some 55 per cent of female 31 headed households are landless and a further 29 per cent own less than one hectare.
Meanwhile, between 2007 and 2013 the number of millionaires in Nigeria increased by approximately 44 per cent – from 10,900 in 2007 to 15,700 in 2013. Regionally, inequality is high in Nigeria, and it translates into higher rates of poverty in the north-western states. In Sokoto State for instance, 81% of the population is poor, while poverty incidence is much lower, at 34 per cent in Niger.
“Economic and gender inequality are interconnected and reinforce each other. The life of Nigerian women is affected by a myriad of discriminatory traditional and socio-cultural practices that put them at disadvantage in a number of areas compared to men. For example, the majority of women are employed in casual, low-skilled, low-paid informal jobs; women are less likely than men to own land and 75.8% of the poorest women have never been to school, compared to 28% of 10richest men. In Jigawa State, 94% of women (against 42% of men) are illiterate. As a result of these disadvantages, women are more likely to be poor than men, and keep being excluded from full participation in the country’s economic, social and politics
Disenfranchising women
Oxfam research, he stated revealed although women represent between 60 and 79 per cent of Nigeria’s rural labour force, men are five times more likely than women to own lands. There are regional differences as women in the South are more likely to own and access land than those in the North.
Also the sector is further beleaguered by environmental problems such as pollution of farmlands in the oil-producing Niger Delta, deforestation, and land degradation in the North.
“Additionally, poor road networks, limited access to financial assets, and women’s lack of inheritance rights to land all further add to the barriers women face in making a livelihood from agriculture. Women constitute only 21% of the non-agricultural paid labour force (British Council, 2012) and even outside agriculture they are relegated to poorly-paid jobs performed under precarious conditions.
“Some factories show a preference for hiring women because they are perceived as less likely to complain about poor wages and unsafe work conditions. As in the case of Joyce Ugbede, many women are forced to work long hours in precarious jobs which pay salaries that are insufficient to meet their basic needs,” he said
Unfavourable Policies
Most government policies are also skewed against small holders farmers as elite capture of public sector policies and resources which undermines the productivity of the most important sectors of the economy and prevent fair distribution of the benefits of growth.
According to Oxfam, most agricultural policies have been unfavourable for majority of small, often poor farmers. As a consequence, agricultural growth has had limited impact on poverty reduction. For instance, a government policy designed to encourage investments in the rice value chain through backward integration has resulted in more difficult production conditions for millers and farmers. There is evidence that import quotas meant for investors with rice-milling capacity were instead issued to cronies, who in turn sold it to larger traders and corporations.
“Millers and rice farm owners have had to deal with the effects of this policy distortion: a combination of import quota racketeering and smuggling through porous borders floods the market with cheap rice. Unfavourable policies in the agriculture sector have also led to the closure of several vegetable oil mills.
“Waivers were granted to select companies to import vegetable oil into the country, creating an uneven playing field for domestic 41manufacturers. Local soya farmers were also affected because the price of soya seeds plummeted. Soya bean production in Nigeria employs about 1,500 skilled and unskilled workers and is a source of income for about 42,000 local farmers, all of whom continue to now face an uncertain future,” the report said.
Recommendations
The Organisation therefore recommended that the present administration increase support and policies for agriculture to better help small-scale farmers by allocating at least 10 per cent of government budgets to support agriculture. Develop National Agricultural Investment Plans that are gender-sensitive and seek primarily to support small-scale farmers in non-cash crop sectors. Bridge the rural–urban divide by ensuring that there is a balance between public investments in rural and urban areas.
It also called on the government to strengthen the land rights of the poorest people, fully implement the African Union’s Land Policy Framework, with particular focus on ending agricultural land poverty, landlessness and insecurity in land use among the poorest people, and particularly among women.
Tchona said women account for about half of all smallholder farmers, but gender inequalities make it difficult for them to access and control land, stop the large-scale land grabbing that is currently happening at the expense of small-scale farmers, streamline land registration processes to ease the burden and the prohibitive cost of land registration, especially for vulnerable groups, including women and young people.
“To promote entrepreneurship in women, Nigeria should consider establishing a Women’s Bank, where women can access collateral-free loans to operate micro and small enterprises. Such a bank would ultimately serve to correct the imbalance and inequality created by a traditional system that hands immovable assets only to husbands, brothers and fathers.
“The private sector has a key role to play in making deliberate policies that remove the barriers to women’s economic participation from the boardroom, the factory floor, supply chains, down to communities that host private sector activities.
“Review all government policy incentives aimed at promoting agriculture-related exports and local agricultural production, including the Export Expansion Grant (EEG) and the Growth Enhancement Scheme, to identify and eliminate bottlenecks, abuses and corrupt practices. Immediate attention should be paid to agriculture insurance. Of the estimated 20 million commercial farmers in Nigeria, only 700,000 (3.5%) have accessed agricultural insurance in the last five years as of 2014, implying over 19 million 76farmers are still unserved.
“A revival of the Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), designed by the Central Bank, to lower lending risk, credited with lifting lending to the sector to about 4% of banks’ total loans (from the average of 1.5%), the scheme puts money in the hands of thousands of smallholder farmers, input producers, agro-processors and other stakeholders in the agricultural value chain. Special efforts should be made to ensure small-scale women farmers have easy access to the fund,” he said.
He also advise that government should train farmers as skills help workers to access non-agricultural jobs and help increase their earnings. And that there is urgent measures are needed to address the youth unemployment crisis by increasing support to small-scale agriculture as essential to addressing poverty and inequality, increase investment, review of government incentives, elimination of bottlenecks and corrupt practices and strengthening of agricultural insurance and credit schemes which are critical to achieving more inclusive agricultural growth.
