Feeling The Pains of Rural Farmers

Agriculture as a practice is so interesting when defining it simply as the rearing of animals and cultivation of crops for human consumption and also serves as input for the industries. However, everybody wants to eat, but very few are in the production of these foods.

Sincerely speaking, everybody goes to the market to buy the foods in the market, but we have no idea of what the farmers had really gone through to ensure that there are foods available in the market for human race to continue. It’s really so annoying when the farmers are being approached with ridiculous prices, but they, had no choice than to accept the pricing because of the fear of food wastage and loss of capital.

Why should a farmer not have happy ending after a tedious and hardship bearer during the period of production? What really causes these?

Youths at a local market selling vegetable, a typical scenario for the rural farmers

As an agricultural extension student, I rarely go to the farm but claiming to be studying agriculture as a course of study in the university. We deliberate more on what researchers had gathered concerning the problems of the rural farmers, but in the four corners of the classroom. We really lack the experience of what the rural farmers are really going through, but It is always a big blow on our faces when we approached the farmers to enlightened them on innovations in agriculture.

However, they shown less interest to what we really want to offer them. I wondered why the farmers refused to listen to us when we approached them in their domain.

But recently, I eventually realized that after serious exposure to real farming at LEAD Transformation Initiative.

What actually caused this will interests you. I will be dissecting this properly in the subsequent editions.

I realized that farmers are always reluctant to change because we don’t know what they are passing through and never proffer solution to the real problems.

My experience as an intern at LEAD Transformation Initiative took me through cultivation processes, from the land preparation to the marketing stage. Experiencing the pains of typical farmers involves cultural practices, using the simple farm tools and implements. There are lots of challenges faced in every stages of production. It was very hard to clear a large area of land with cutlass and making ridges with hoe. After the planting and wedding process, the farm experience pest and rodents’ infestations, which really discouraged some of the farmers along the line.

Now, the joy of a farmer is to make profit of the farm output, but its so disastrous struggling to make sales of the farm produces due to the poor market structure, competition among the producers and the lack of storage facilities.

Furthermore, the rural farmers are really discouraged to engaged in large production, its not because they are not capable of producing commercially, or there are not resources to carryout the operations, but they are really afraid of food spoilage, ridiculous prices, poor market structure, and lack of storage facilities, which is mostly caused by bad information network.

Food security is world priority. Food will continue to be unsecured if the root cause of these problems are not solved. I remain on the claim that rural farmers will not adopt the innovations to improve their production commercially if there is no provisions to secure their production.

Written by Ajayi Olasunkanmi John