WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-04-19 Time: 08:00:07 Posted By: News Poster
By Godwin Haruna
Lagos – Mrs. Rebecca Mathias is a farmer from Bokkos, a village on the outskirts of Jos South Local Government Area of Plateau State. Like all rural women, Mathias does her subsistence agriculture in her village with some to spare for the village market. From the little earnings from her agricultural produce, the mother of six caters for her family. Her major handicaps, she told THISDAY recently, are fertilizer and inability to access loans to expand her business.
Rural women are predominantly farmers and it is said that women devote more time to productive activities than men. Despite this however, Project Officer, Women in Agriculture Association (WIAA), Mrs. Msendo Agatha Dzum, said women are constrained by lack of access to land, agric loans, inputs, storage facilities and extension services.
On top of all these constraints, Dzum lamented to THISDAY during an interview recently: “women are not adequately involved in decision-making processes at the household and community level. This has attendant implications on their ability to demand for government support and contribute to policies that affect them. Input support to farmers from government such as fertilizers are targeted only at men to the exclusion of women farmers. Women’s access is dependent on their husbands who may decide to share. Land is often times acquired through inheritance and women do not inherit land. Women’s access to land is dependent on allocation from their husband or hire. Important farm inputs like fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides are either not available or too expensive for the women to buy.”
All these factors, Dzum said, inhibit women from expanding their farm business despite enormous enthusiasm to feed the nation with resources to spare for their families. It is against this background that Oxfam GB, an international organisation reputed for fighting poverty across the globe, became involved in the project to strengthen women’s effectiveness in agriculture in three states of North-central Nigeria. These are Benue, Nassarawa and Plateau, where WIAA works to enhance women’s agricultural practice.
Dzum told THISDAY that her organisation works with about 50 women farmers’ cooperative societies from the three states for the purpose of enhancing their activities. She said with support from Oxfam GB, they have done advocacy visits to committees on agriculture of the state houses of assemblies on how the women can access farming implements and farmlands in their respective states. Similar visits were also made to the executive branch of the state governments supervising agriculture and lands and survey.
“The issues that formed the basis of our visits to these branches of government include inability to access land, fertilizers; credits to enable them expand their farming activities and lack of access to markets. So, all these things were presented to the various branches of government in these three states so that they can find a way of alleviating the problems of the small scale rural farmer, especially the women. They promised to make sure that our complaints receive the necessary attention it deserves so that our women can really begin to reap the fruits of their labour in the real sense of the word,” Dzum said.
She said within the six-month duration of the Oxfam GB project, they intend to cover considerable grounds so as to change abject condition of poverty that the rural women in agriculture are perennially consigned. She said in one state, the commissioner of lands assured them that women should apply for land in any area they want, a promise that his counterpart in the agriculture ministry also repeated for farming implements such as agriculture and herbicides.
Asked if the project and their own activities have the potential to assist in food production in the country, the project officer Dzum said: “I can say categorically yes, because if the women are suddenly receiving the attention of the people that drive the policies of government, then in no time, it will impact on the activities of those tilling the land to grow food. You do know that a majority of these are rural women. In our roundtable discussions with them, they listened to us and I will say those in government appreciate what the rural women are doing in agriculture, therefore giving a helping hand to them would certainly improve their activities on the farm thereby impacting on food production generally. I believe our interaction with them would be favourable.”
Also speaking on the impact of the project, Mathias expressed optimism that it would change their situation. She hinged her optimism on the fact that for the first time, they came together with policy makers and were able to lay their complaints, especially those that have impinged on their performance over the years adding that if such issues are now directly addressed in her state, they would be placed in a better position to perform optimally “and we will have recovered from our poverty.”
She said in Plateau State, the interface with the officials even made them to request for agricultural tractors, which they could use on their farms and the officials agreed with them on the need to provide such support. She said the project has raised their hopes of not only becoming commercial farmers, but earning big money from their efforts on the long run.
She said the present arrangement especially in fertilizer procurement and distribution is heavily tilted against the women that in some farming seasons, they end up labouring in vain. “You discover that even when you have laboured to farm a large farm area, you won’t see fertilizers to apply. You know in Plateau State, our land is not fertile, you need fertilizers to ensure good produce, but in a situation where you don’t have, what do you do? It is very difficult for women like me to access fertilizer. The state government distributes, but it is not to the local farmers. They are sold to those who have money, who then resell them to the local farmers at exorbitant rates,” Mathias said.
She said another impediment is the near absence of mechanised farming among the rural farmers even when land is available to them a situation that is adversely affecting the productivity of rural women farmers, who have been relegated to the use of local implements alone.
The rural farmer also spoke about their difficulty in marketing their harvested food crops, due to the activities of middle men, who generally short change them. She gave the example of tomatoes, which she said they grow a lot, but because they are perishable products, the middle men come to their local markets to buy at ridiculous prices only to resell in big cities like Abuja at cut throat prices.
“Our major problem is market. We want to have a ready market where we can send our farm produce to. The present situation does not favour us and it has contributed to our impoverishment as other people feed fat on our sweat.
“For now, both the state and the local government are not giving us any assistance whatsoever. However, as this Oxfam project is now bringing us together, we hope that they would change their attitude towards the rural farmer. May be they have been assisting the bigger farmers in the cities, but nothing has come our own way yet,” Mathias said.
She mentioned areas of assistance dearest to them to include fertilizers and tractors which she said they could even hire as cooperatives. As the 2010 farming season approaches, Mathias could not hope for anything more than the government giving them assistance in these areas so that they can grow more food.
Improving women’s leadership and effectiveness in the agricultural governance in the North central of Nigeria is a project that is been funded by Oxfam GB, to pep up those growing food in the countryside. According to campaigns and communications coordinator of Oxfam in Nigeria, Mr. Osaro Odemwingie, the overall purpose of the project is to promote the participation of poor women in leadership positions and participation in decision- making at all levels of agricultural governance and production. The project, he added, is being implemented in the North central states of Benue, Nasarawa, and Plateau by Women in Agriculture Association (WIAA) and in collaboration with Project Agape (Lafia) and Country Women Association of Nigeria (COWAN) (Jos). In between these organisations, there are about 50 women farmers’ cooperative groups that are involved in its implementation.
He said, the project was part of a larger programme of the organisation aimed at reducing poverty for the most vulnerable groups, adding that Oxfam’s current campaign is to get the Nigerian government commit large funds to small scale agriculture and to recognise the importance of women’s contribution to the sector, which is in the region of 70 per cent. The project, he said, is therefore informed by the need to empower women farmers to occupy positions of authority where they can direct policies in their favour.
He said that these objectives could however, be achieved only if women come together to interact as a group and identify their common challenge and agree on a common and coordinated approach to ask questions and influence policies in their favour.
According to Dzum, the main objective of the need assessment, she said, was to have evidence of the existing skills and capacity by the women leaders and those requiring enhancement to enable them provide strategic leadership for farmer cooperatives/groups on advocacy, lobbying and negotiation, and to assert, demand and achieve increased participation and representation in agricultural governance.
The assessment also aimed at establishing skills requirement to improve the visibility, profile and leadership of women in agricultural cooperatives and public institutions.
Beyond their challenges earlier outlined, she said the need assessment research established their strengths and opportunities as follows: activities of women cooperative groups are based on communal life already being practised in rural areas; farming is relatively less tedious in the North-central because of the fertile soil, favourable weather, and the traditional role of women supporting their husbands in the farm unlike North-western states; women are predominantly farmers and have the basic capacity to run agro-based cooperatives and finally, a number of government agencies are implementing programmes that support farmers. Key examples, she mentioned, include BNARDA (provides extension services), and NACRB (provides agric loans to farmers as well as technical support).
Original Source: 
Original date published: 18 April 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201004190157.html?viewall=1