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By Chinyere Anyanwu
The rising costs of farm labour and other inputs occasioned by the high costs of energy and petrol has continued to deal deadly blows to the incomes and overall livelihood of farmers across the country.
The farmers who have lamented their plight are stressing that the situation will not augur well for the agricultural sector which majorly sustains the country’s economy as well as the poor consumers who are worse hit by the situation.
A farmer and General Secretary of Ogbonge Women Farmers in Lagos, Mrs. Joy Onime, in a chat with Daily Sun, lamented that farmers are struggling and losing profit owing to the effect of high inputs cost on production cost.
Onime said, “farmers are often stuck because there’s a level you can take price to. Many times we have the buyer dictating the price, especially for aquaculture. These costs of inputs affect, to a great extent, the farmer’s return on investment. Because the purchasing power of consumers is dwindling so we tend not to out price ourselves. The margins of the farmers are being cut into because we just want to sell to avoid having to continue feeding our produce.”
According to her, “the cost of hiring labour has gone up. To get farm hands to maintain the farm these days is very expensive. The workers take nothing less than N10,000 for daily work. Unlike before, you could get for N5,000 – N7,000, now they want nothing less than N10,000 for about seven hours of work. But the sales are still the same.”
For her, part of the major
The challenges farmers are experiencing is infrastructure deficit.
She noted that, “because power supply, a major input in production, is inadequate, most farmers invest in other sources of power generation to be able to power their cold chains and processing equipment and these things don’t come cheap. So you have loans to pay, which come with their own interest rates. All these costs are passed down to the producer and how much can you make when you attach all these costs to the produce. These are what affect the costs of produce everyday. For instance, in the poultry value chain, the cost of buying day-old chicks has shot up as compared to last year. So also the cost of freezing poultry products because of the energy cost.”
The Ogbonge Women image maker, stated that farmers bear the brunt of every increase in the costs of inputs, saying, “that’s why they are being encouraged to look beyond production into value addition whereby you find a way to stop your livestock from continued feeding because continuous feeding means continuous spending on inputs and further reduced return on investment, which pushes a lot of farmers out of business due to frustration.”
Also commenting on the issue of impact of high inputs cost on production and farmers’ eroding profit margins, the founder and Managing Director of Amicable Mondiale Farms, an Ogun State-based farm, Mrs. Amaka Chukwudum, expressed frustration at what farmers who feed the nation have to contend with in the course of making food available to consumers.
Chukwudum said, “we don’t do farming with chemical inputs like fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides. We do organic farming so we produce our own inputs because we want to give consumers healthy products. But we still have to rely on labour. The labour cost is high. Before now, a farm hand was paid about N30,000. Now, if you want a very reliable farm hand, you should be looking at N120,000.
“The farm hands don’t even want to work again. If you call any farmer now, you will hear that their major challenge is farm workers. Nobody wants to stay in the bush and work again because they are scared of insecurity. Apart from fear of being kidnapped or killed, the high cost of living is making it impossible for what you pay them to be sufficient in taking care of their families. Everything goes around in a circle, so you have to pay them well for them to be able to stay in your farm and work for you because they will send money home to feed their families.”
She further lamented: “We still buy equipment for land clearing and to get a good one will cost you about N350,000. How much is a farmer making that you have to spend all that on production?
“Despite the money I pay my farm workers, it’s still not enough for them. They still steal and sell my machines. There’s no year I’m not buying new machines and they keep stealing them. I took a loan from the Bank of Industry to buy a machine but some of my workers colluded and stole it. Till today, I’m still paying the loan because you must pay. I went to the police but they couldn’t help me, even with the camera I have, which captured the people. The police still cannot catch them till now.
“Talking about profit margin, you cannot really be getting much from your production now because of these challenges.
There is also the climate change issue causing too much stress for the birds and causing them to die. This high mortality rate among the birds further reduces the farmer’s profit margin.”
The President of LASCAFAN, Mr. Olatoye Fajimi, is of the opinion that the high costs of inputs have been driven majorly by the fluctuating price of petrol on which a lot of other production indices depend.
He stated that, “apart from cost of fuel that has really been fluctuating, prices of other major inputs like feed have been stable. Though it increased a lot towards the end of last year, it has not gone further up like that this year.”
