The Small Scale Women
Farmers Organization in Nigeria (SWOFON) has demanded the 35percent
agricultural allocation for women farmers to bridge the gap of inequality in
the agriculture and boost productivity among the women farmers in Nigeria.
The National
President, SWOFON, Mary Afan Ishaya said this while submitting their demand to
Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Abuja as part of the
activities to carry out national campaign on collective advocates for improved
seeds and seedling, fertilizer, gender friendly equipment, gender equity in
agriculture among others.
Ishaya said the demand and application is born
out of the need to bridge the gender gap in agriculture and boost productivity
among the women farmers who despites accounting for 72 percent of agricultural
Labour force in Nigeria are disadvantaged.
Speaking further on
some of the problems faced by members of SWOFON, said said, dependency on human
power has over the years contributed significantly to low agricultural
productivity and is responsible for the huge poverty rate, low life expectancy
and failing health experienced among women smallholder farmers due to the use
of crude implements and manual farming.
She however, expressed
optimism that their collective demand would be met as it will directly improve
the farm yields and outputs of small-scale women farmers and making them more
productive and leading to an increase in their income.
The Director of
Federal Department of Agriculture, Karima Babangida in her remarks appreciates
the effort of SWOFON to carry out the campaign on behalf of the small holders
women farmers in the country in the right direction by working closely with
ministry.
Babangida assured
SWOFON that the ministry is gender friendly and that they would benefits from various
strategic agro policy programmes from the ministry such as seeds, equipments
and machineries of government at subsidise rates whenever they are procured by
the ministry.