Women farmers crave for agric budget, gender-friendly policies

The Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON) has advocated for proper implementation of agricultural budget and gender-friendly agricultural policies to boost food production in the country.

Mrs Ogechi Okebugwu, Programme Coordinator of SWOFON, made the appeal at one-day town hall meeting and strategic engagement with stakeholders on monitoring and implementation of agricultural budget on Friday in Lafia.

The organisation also demanded for budget preparation and processes that reflects policy position in national and international standard as it affects small holder women farmers in the state.

According to Okebugwu, small holder women farmers are major producers and contributors to food sufficiency and security in the country, hence the need to capture issues that affected them in the budget processes and implementation.

She enumerated SWOFON demands to include gender-friendly mechanisation, revolving micro credit facilities to increase the productive capacities of women, farm inputs such as improved seedlings, fertilisers and pesticides.

Others are extension services with innovation, research findings on new farming techniques, ICT, capacity building on climate change resilience, adaptation and mitigation strategies.

It also includes capacity building to minimise post-harvest losses, improved legislative oversight over public expenditure agriculture with a focus of value for money among others.

“This programme is in five states- Nasarawa , Jigawa, Oyo, Anambra and Niger. We are advocating on issues that affects small holder women farmers and how our voices can be heard.

“This programme is essentially focus more on issue of budget as it affects small holder women farmers, if you don’t identify and capture these issues affecting them in the budget processes, then is a problem.

“They are the major contributors to agricultural sector in the country and Nasarawa State, so we are advocating to the government to see how they can capture this line items in the state budget,” she said.

On her part, Mrs Jumai Yohana,  Nasarawa state SWOFON Coordinator, decried the non capturing and implementation of budget as it relates to the issues affecting small holder women farmers.

Jumai, represented by her assistant, Mrs Caroline Abimikwu, sought for participatory budgetary planning that would include issues that affect SWOFON and ensure implementation so as to benefit women farmers in the state.

Speaking, Hajiya Munira Abdullahi, Special Adviser to Gov. Abdullahi Sule on NGOs and Development Partners, said the state government was working with organisations such as SWOFON to better the life of women farmers.

“We are quite aware of the plights of women farmers; lack of access to land, loans, inputs and gender based violence, and without dealing with such issues, I don’t think as a nation we can move forward.

“This is because a lot of women farmers are responsible for putting the food on our tables today.

“So, we urge you all to stay tuned and deliberate on these issues and come out with solution so that we can move forward,” she  said.