Daily Trust,
What are the challenges that you face as a female farmer in a traditional rural society?
In fact, being a female farmer, it has not been easy because the big challenge we have is the land issue. As a woman you are not given any land, you don’t have right to any land. Maybe if you have a husband and he is opportuned to have a land, that land belongs to him alone; and maybe the land may not be enough for him to use. So you as a woman under him, you have to go and look for your own land to use; in doing so you have to hire. As a woman if you have interest in farming you have to hire a land. We also have issue around hiring land. If you have to hire a farmland, you have to go to a man that has the land. So when you go now he will say after all you are a woman under your husband and he has land why are you coming to hire a land? You want to compete with men.
Do the farmland owners charge you higher as a woman?
Yes,they charge higher. Again if it is a land that he will rent to his fellow man at N5, 000, for me a woman, it will be N8, 000 or N10, 000 for one year. If it’s a man, he can rent that land to him for many years with that same amount he gives a woman for just one year. For a woman, if you negotiate for five years, he will insist you must pay for all the years before you can be allowed to cultivate the land. At times they will allow you pay for three years. When he finally gives you the land, he must make sure the land is not fertile- is not a land that you will get more yield there. So, if they give a woman such a land, she will now try in her wisdom to resuscitate the land with cow dung or chaffs in order to get more yields. After you resuscitate the land and he noticed you are getting good yield, he will tell you look I want to make use of the land this year, collect the remaining two years rent and go and look for land elsewhere. So, for you as a woman, for him to give you back your money at that time to go and begin to look for another land before you could start to make arrangement to cultivate it that year, it may be too late for you. So you can see we have huge challenges regarding land issue.
Secondly, in terms of farm inputs, when fertilizer is made available, they normally share it to men, and women don’t get it. So we have to go to the open market to buy at a high cost. Farm inputs like seeds, at times NADP will come with it but they will only give to the men whereas we women would have to go and buy our own. So it has been a big issue being a woman farmer. You have challenges from your husband, the community and people around you but thank God I did not give up. Now some men are begging to understand, some that have much land could give to their wife to cultivate crops on it.
Nasarawa state is one of the states that are rocked with serious crises. How has that affected you as a farmer?
In fact that affected me so much because all that we invested in 2014, we could not come out with anything. And the little land that I bought which I was farming on in my community we have to abandon it, our house has been destroyed, my son has to rent a house for me in Lafia. Currently the land I’m cultivating now is given to me by people who sympathized with us.