COVID-19: Kogi cashew farmers count losses
The outbreak of the novel COVID-19 worldwide also has a debilitating impact on cashew business; causing immense losses to farmers in Kogi State.
Kogi, according to the National Cashew Association of Nigeria (NCAN) which is saddled with the mandate of coordinating and monitoring production, processing and marketing of cashew products along the value chain, is the largest producer of the product in the country.
Its harvest period this year comes in the middle of COVID-19 emergencies which shut down the country amid rising fatalities and spread of the virus.
Farmers in the state said it would be difficult for them to rise from the effect of the virus which halted the export of the products and hurt players across the value chain.
Most of those who trade in the commodity are expatriates who could not come into the country following the ban on international flights.
A cashew farmer, Mr. Okanyi Enemali, lamented to North Central Trust in Lokoja that business had never been so bad, warning that the aftermath could cripple the subsector altogether in the absence of intervention from the Federal Government and its international partners.
Mr. Enemali said although there was low yield this year because of the long harmattan season, lack of storage facilities to preserve the nuts after harvest due to the inability of the offtakers to have access to them affected productivity and down prices.
“For this year, the experience is so terrible. Not only me, but all cashew farmers suffered the same fate.
“First, it was climate change, and secondly, the lockdown caused by COVID-19.
“On the issue of climate change, we had too much harmattan this year so the fruits did not do well because as at the time they needed some level of heat for the flower to consolidate, the harmattan continued and it’s not really good for us.
“One serious effect of the harmattan is that the flowers got dried and this affected expected yield.
“We suffered so much as we do not have good storage facility and government was not also helping matters,” he explained.
He said the anomaly left farmers who took loans in expectation of paying after harvest in serious debt.
“We expected our government to buy our farm produce since they have the capacity to do so but they were not forthcoming,” he lamented.
In the same vein, Arome Amodu, another farmer, said the loss was overwhelming, noting that since farmers do not have insurance cover to take care of such losses, they are in for a rough time.
He called on the federal government to intervene by taking over the loan facilities taken by farmers and also investing heavily in the sub-sector.
He also appealed to the government to establish cashew processing plants in the state to save the country a lot of foreign exchange and create jobs.
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