From Abdulrazaq Mungadi, Gombe
Farmers in Gombe State have raised the alarm that there could be a sharp increase in food insecurity, if nothing is done to check the high cost of agricultural inputs for wet season farming in the state.
According to some of the farmers interviewed by Daily Sun in Gombe, the 2022 farming season may be the worst that the state and the country have ever experienced in terms of annual food production. However, many of them who lamented the high cost of inputs such as fertilizer believe that the anticipated low output of agricultural produce can be overcome with genuine investment by government.
Alhaji Musa Inuwa Arab, a large-scale rice farmer, said: “A lot of farmers are already discouraged from farming this year because they don’t have access to fertilizer and they cannot afford fertilizer in the open market. Buying from the open market will bring no gain to them at all as a bag of fertilizer is being sold for over N20,000. Some products are even up to N32,000 now in the market, that is beyond the reach of our ordinary farmers in this country.
“One of the major challenges we are going to face after this rainy season is food. You know, Nigeria depends on these peasant farmers for food, we don’t really have enough large-scale farmers that can sustain the food needs of the country. Most of our food producers are the peasant farmers who work here and there to produce food from every corner of the country. So, anything that affects them will affect our food need, the economy and even some jobs.”
According to Arab, while farmers were being discouraged and afraid of cultivating their lands by the high cost of fertilizer, government at all levels was only issuing political statements regarding the development of the agricultural sector, “with nothing concrete on the ground to prove their plans.”
“This is so unfortunate. The rainy season has started; now is the time to prove their support for agriculture. Anything done after this time might be too late. Our farmers that had plans and wanted to cultivate their farms have cleared the land, some have even gone and planted their seeds and are now waiting for government to encourage them by bringing subsidized fertilizer into the market.”
Other farmers interviewed were worried about the prices of fertilizer and other inputs that were cheaper and easier to get during the previous season. Mr. Bitrus Zaccheaus, a farmer from the Billiri Local Government Area of Gombe State, said: “The high cost of inputs would affect productivity because it has forced me and some other farmers in my area to reduce the size of the farmland we cultivate.”
He explained that he was forced to cut down on the number of fertilizers, seeds and chemicals, which he said were critical to successful crop production: “Agricultural inputs such as improved seeds, fertilizers and pesticides are now more expensive.”
Ibrahim Na-Bingi, a farmer in Yamaltu/Deba LGA, confirmed that many farmers that had cleared their farmlands could not cultivate them due to the high cost of inputs. He appealed for support for farmers in the state, adding: “It is not too late for the government to still support farmers in Gombe State to cultivate more crops this year.
“If this is not done, many farmers may become poor because they would have spent a lot to farm and may not get as much returns on their investments.”
Many other farmers from Nafada LGA also shared the same experience while calling for urgent support.
Meanwhile, the Gombe State government has charged the farmers to remain calm and continue with their farming activities as the government was working to provide a subsidized fertilizer for the season.
According to Governor Muhammad Inuwa Yahaya, the government’s plan to provide fertilizer for the farmers before the commencement of the raining season was left hanging due to some challenges that were occasioned by ongoing global challenges such as COVID-19 as well as the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
Speaking during a live media chat in Gombe, the governor assured farmers that the government’s plans to provide the fertilizer, an essential input for farmers in the state, were still active and they were working on executing it.
He said: “First of all, I have to apologise to our people for the situation that we are in and this is not just in Gombe State.
“We had some challenges in the provision of the fertilizer last year and am afraid this year might be more difficult because things have not improved. But even with that, we will still try to get the fertilizer for our farmers before the end of this June, to support our people and we will make sure that it is subsidized in a way that our farmers can afford.”
While Governor Yahaya assured farmers in the state that his administration had plans for the agric sector and urged them to return to the farm, an expert at the state’s Agricultural Development Project (GSADP) explained why farmers in Gombe were keen on the use of fertilizer for farming every year.
Joseph Hussaini Kaltungo, director of technical services, GSADP, told Daily Sun in an interview that the situation around high demand for the fertilizer by farmers in Gombe State was caused by the challenges of climate change and soil infertility that are being experienced and hitting hard on the state.
He said: “We are facing the realities of climate change and soil infertility due to continuous cropping.”
Kaltungo explained that the soil around Gombe had been decreasing in fertility, hence the need for farmers to apply a lot of fertilizer so as to meet up with the soil fertility requirement in food production.
He said: “Our soil is becoming less and less fertile and so farmers will have to apply a lot of fertilizer in order to meet up with the soil fertility requirement and, unfortunately, the fertilizer that is needed for that purpose is not friendly in terms of price.
“Fertilizer is soaring very high and high in the market. I think the high cost of the fertilizer is because of the federal government’s ban on the production of urea and some other products and that made it difficult for states government to bring in the fertilizer at a subsidized price. Now the marketers are the only ones bringing the fertilizer and they are having a field day,” the Director added.
While urging farmers in Gombe not to be discouraged by the cost and non-availability of a subsidized fertilizer, Kaltugo said: “We encourage the farmers to go into organic farming, that will help and it is also one way of replenishing the soil fertility to meet the requirement.
“We should apply organic manure from either animal dung or poultry dropping, we encourage farmers to get such and apply in their farms and that organic substance is an organic matter to the soil, it contributes to restoring the fertility of the soil.”
The director further explained that the farmers will need to apply plenty of the animal dung to meet the requirement of the soil and achieve the desired result. According to him, “when you are applying a chemical fertilizer like NPK maybe five to six bags in a hectare of land, you may need to apply about a ton or more of the animal dung to be able to get the same result with a farmer who applies five bags of the chemical fertilizer.
“A ton of animal dung is about 10 bags, so the farmers can use a mixture of both the animal dung and the chemical fertilizer. We prefer the farmers to complement, you can add NPK fertilizer and complement with the organic manure. The advantage of organic manure is that it is slow release, once it is discomposing it releases the NPK and other micronutrients slowly.
“It takes about two to three years to completely decompose unlike the chemical NPK fertilizer which if you apply it now, it gets dissolves now, it gets absorbed this year and you will have to apply the same next year, it is made of chemical substances and they are depleting not improving the soil fertility, but organic manure improves soil structure, soil texture and it increases the water retention capacity of the soil.
“We are happy that many of our farmers are now aware of it and are rushing to get it in replacement of the chemical fertilizer. Now a 50kg bag of animal dun is now being sold for N1000 and more farmers are going for it and that is good for our soil and our farm produce and by implication our health too, so the high cost of chemical fertilizer has brought some advantages of forcing our farmers to embrace organic farming which had taken the centre stage elsewhere around the world.”