By: Collins Nnabuife – Abuja
The All Farmers Association (AFAN) and FarinCiki Nigeria have unveiled an AFAN customised tricycle designed by Sanguo Motors, Korea, which would be distributed to farmers across the country for transportation of farm produce from farm to market.
The National President of AFAN, Farouk Mudi while speaking during the unveiling ceremony in Abuja, said transportation of farm produce from the farm to market and storage facilities has been one of the major challenges of Nigeria farmers.
He said the high cost of moving farm produce invariably increases the cost of production, thereby causing high cost of farm produce in the markets.
“I am a farmer, I know the kind of suffering that farmers are having in terms of transporting their inputs to the farm and produce back from the farm to the market and warehouses.
“Transportation takes a lot of money in the cost of production, so once we can cut the cost of transportation, definitely, not only we the farmers even the consumers will feel it because the cost that will be cut will also reduce the cost of food in the market, so definitely it will not only affect the economy of the farmers, but it will affect the economy of everyone”, Mudi said.
He further stated that the reason why the private sector is involved in this project is that agriculture should be seen as a business and the government should not be allowed to drive the agricultural sector.
“Agriculture cannot be left in the hands of the government alone, because if you look at the budget of agriculture at the federal, state and local government, it is less than 10% of what agriculture needs or demands.
“Therefore, we need to bring in the private sector, everywhere you go in the world, private sector drives the agricultural sector, but here in Nigeria, everything is left in the hands of the government, that is why we are not moving forward.
“So, let the government provide an enabling environment and other support services. I always urge farmers to take agriculture as a business.
The CEO of FarinCiki Nigeria Alhaji Ibrahim Idimi said the benefit of the tricycle is the ability of farmers to move their products easily from their farms to the markets and storage facilities.
He said during their research, they found out that the major challenge farmers face is transportation of their products, so they introduced the innovation to address the challenge.
The most important benefit is for the farmers to be able to move their produce from the farm to the market place or from the farm to the storage facilities that have always been the challenges.
“We tried to look out for the challenges the farmers face and every time the redline was always on the transportation, that was why we created this vehicle to meet the needs of the farmers.
“We worked in collaboration with the All Farmers Association of Nigeria, we came up with a template where we will fund and bring the vehicle, distribute it to the farmers and we will spread a payment plan of 5 years for them through micro-financing.
“So, whatever the farmer does per week, he puts a little of that into the account until 5 years’ time he is able to purchase the vehicle”, Idimi noted.
The Presidential Candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, in his address, promised to increase Nigeria’s agricultural sector value to N55 trillion.
Atiku, who was represented by a Chieftain of the PDP, Ambassador Ibrahim Bashir, further stated that agriculture is the surest path to economic recovery.
“Agriculture for economic recovery is one of the five point agenda of Atiku Abubakar, his plan is to increase agriculture from the value of N41.3 trillion to N55 trillion by the year 2030.
“In a book titled ‘My Covenant with Nigerians’, he mentioned that he is going to make women and youth in his agricultural policy to benefit from loans which are almost like interest free or minimal interest so that it will boost small scale enterprise and small scale farming”, he noted.
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