SWOFON President Decries The Vulnerability Of Women In Agriculture

0 126

Yakubu Busari

The National President of Small Scale Women Farmers Organization In Nigeria, SWOFON, Mrs. Mary Afan has decried the challenges of rural women and disenfranchised groups who are located in remote areas through making delivery of supplies, pickup of produce in Plateau and the country.

Mrs Afan made disclosure at Mountain View during the dissemination of community scorecards on the support and participation of smallholder’s women farmers in value chain development programme in Jos, Plateau state on Thursday.

She said the support for value chain programs across the four States including Plateau, Kaduna Enugu and Cross River has generally been relevant with limited project activities were directed to small-scale venue of federal government value chain activities.

According to her, there is little or no impact of VCDP on poor and marginalized women farmers which many smallholders’ women farmers who are engage in production than in post-production activities suffered due to lack of process equipment

She raised concern that women are among voiceless towards influencing agricultural policies which they embark on analysis to engage women on enlightenment on their rights and on available opportunities.

She disclosed further that the stakeholders were engage to review and response to issues regarding the development and Implementation of VCDP, adding smallholder’s women farmers are not involved in decision making and policy issues at local, state and national levels.

However, the voice of small scale women farmers’ organization in Nigeria (SWOFON) on Malabo declaration is an innovative project implemented by smallholder’s women farmers to amplify their roles in Nigerians agriculture and seeks to address the challenges of limited participation of smallholder’s women farmers in agriculture and implementation.

She noted that the inclusion of smallholders women farmers in Nigeria SWOFON agriculture and food security assessment on support and participation of members across the rural and urban women.

In her scorecards, Afan explained that this project and associated deliverables are to foster so as to meet the needs, challenges and opportunities of small scale women farmers in Nigeria for empowerment.

She commended Governor Simon Bako Lalong for his kind gesture for increase of budget allocation to agriculture and advocating towards influencing women spending also identifying the problems of smallholder’s women farmers in fertilizer distribution.

Mrs Afan maintained that the scorecards today to take assessment of local women who are very poor and are also vulnerable to the climate change to plant crops that can help not crops that last till 9 months before harvest .

She stressed that the rural women are among voiceless and marginalized women groups in the area of loan disbursement which condition is so difficult for value chain programs across the four States.

Leave a Reply