Benue maize farmers lament poor harvest …As worms eat up premature maize
After witnessing poor harvest, it can be said that, indeed, this is a bad time for maize farmers in Benue State.
Many farmers felt disappointed because they could not meet their expectation for bountiful harvest after a plentiful rain.
A farmer in Otukpo area of the state, Sunday Achigili, lamented that his maize, though planted early and had sufficient rainfall, was ruined by worms which ate the stalks and leaves.
“That affected my maize productivity because I didn’t realise it on time to spray the plants with chemicals,” Achigili said.
“My maize farm at the end of the day couldn’t fetch me any meaningful harvest.”
Similarly, Vitalis Ternongo, said that his four hectares of maize farm was threatened by the stem, stalks and leaves-eating insects and worms.
Ternongo said: “It wasn’t like this last year. I had a bumper harvest of four tonnes per hectare. That was 40 bags of 100kg per hectare but, as it is now, I’m scared that the harvest of this year would not be up to half of last season’s.”
He said that he had unsuccessfully spent N50,000 on each hectare, this year, on workmanship, fertilisers and other inputs deployed to fight diseases in his farm.
He said that it was in the bid to have bumper harvest that he used the high yielding and early maturity maize variety, lamenting that his efforts yielded little results.
The story was not different in Guma Local Government Area of the state where maize farmers expressed their displeasure with the poor harvest witnessed in their farm.
Mrs. Florence Tersoo, a native of Daudu in Guma, said that maize was a staple food crop in her area, adding: “I feel very bad that my family’s maize farm did not yield as much as we expected this year because of some worms that ate the plants.
“We used to sell part of the harvested maize in the past to raise income for our upkeep. But what we got this year is far less than what we used to get and it can’t meet our needs.”
But, for Ceiphas Iornem, the harvest from his maize farm in Makurdi was not bad, despite the fact that it was not as good as it was last year.
He said: “The harvest was not good for me like last year because I did not apply fertiliser. However, I still had good yield because of the soil’s fertility.”
Meanwhile, Dr Lucky Omoigui, a plant breeder in the College of Agronomy, Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi (UAM), said that the farmers may have suffered from the activities of “stembora” or a beetle bug.
Omoigui said that the farmers ought to have spread the plant with chemicals at early stage to stand any chance of fighting the disease, pointing out that doing so at later stage was not helpful.
“The seeds planted may not be bad but the variety maybe susceptible to stembora which had been a common problem this year,” he said.
The plant breeder said that maize was the second most valued staple food in Nigeria, lamenting that the level of maize production had gone down.
He stressed the need to increase productivity so that farmers can derive maximum benefit from their farm.
“Once the farmer is able to derive maximum benefits in terms of income, their livelihood will improve,” he said.
“People of Benue State are going to have opportunity to access improved maize variety that can challenge the major constraint of maize production. The issue of low soil fertility is also another constraint.”
In the meantime, maize farmers and traders feared that the price of maize would rise beyond the reach of low income earners later this year.