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Hon. Shunom Adinga
By Anthony Maliki
A robust agricultural policy especially for the benefit of peasant farmers would be formulated by the Labour Party in Kaduna State if elected into power in next year’s polls.
The governorship candidate of the party in the state, Hon. Shunom Adinga made the remarks in an exclusive interview with Apex News Exclusive in Abuja.
He said middlemen have hijacked agricultural business to the detriment of farmers because they have the money which have become determinant factor for commodities.
According to him, peasant farmers are suffering because of lack of processes because produce is perishable and lack of processing system.
Hon. Adinga pointed out when the farmer harvests, he is tempted to dispose because they don’t want it wasted in their possession and middlemen take advantage of it and mop-up the commodities at very cheap rates.
He said already he is a member of think-tank that comprises a lot of prominent people and captains of industries that have evolved methods that will be beneficial to farmers and would implement when elected in next year’s election.
Part of the programme, the governorship candidate said, is the introduction of the warehousing system where farmers would have storage facility.
Hon. Adinga explained that by this, market value would be enforced by creating artificial scarcity so that farmers can get value for their cultivation.
While stressing agriculture is the bedrock of development of any society, Hon. Adinga noted that the activity has been hampered by insecurity in Nigeria.
He however when elected into government and insecurity tackled, farmers would be formed into clusters and mechanized introduced.
According to him, mechanized farming would be key as it is not an individual thing because training is required. “This training would happen whereby you line farmers into clusters and have a land, get investors ready to invest in a Public-Private-Partnership system.
“This because the peasant farmer might not actually have the money to go into mechanized farming but they have their physical strength, they have their land. So, any other partner within the society would be investors coming to partner them who would be able to use their human capital and use their advantage of ecosystem and their environmental system to farm,” he said.
