Farmers convass adoption of agro-ecology farming as panacea to product rejection in international market

As group trains Rivers farmers on production of organic fertilizers

Some farmers in Rivers State have advocated the adoption of wide scale Agro-ecology farming, saying the method will help to reduce the incessant rejections of Nigerian Agricultural products at the International market.

The farmers, who lamented poor yields despite using fertiliser, also urged the federal government to put policies in place and rollout plans to introduce application and production of organic fertiliser as against inorganic fertiliser mostly distributed by its ministry as government intervention to farmers.

They made the call at a one-day training on production of organic fertiliser in K-Dere Community, Gokana Council of the state at the weekend.

They farmers described the training as eye-opening, saying the sensitization on some measures they can adopt towards improving their crop yields since they may not have money to buy pesticides that would also harm the environment is coming in handy.

One of the farmers Erabanabari Kobah, blamed the many years of oil exploration, especially in Ogoniland saying it has devastated the environment to the point that farm produce is dwindling and farm income is also dwindling because of poor yields despite using inorganic fertilizers.

“So we think, practical training of this nature would go a long way to assist us in making use of what is available in the environment to tackle the challenges they may have as farmers,” he said.

Also, Joyce Brown, Director of Programmes, Health of Mother Earth Foundation(HOMEF) sponsors of the training on usage of organic fertiliser said inorganic has a serious implications for both humans and the environment, noting that it is chiefly the reason for the rejection of Nigerian products by European countries.

According to her, reports have it that over 70 percent foods coming from Nigeria are being rejected due to the heavy presence of pesticides.

She said: “We did this training because we are trying to teach our farmers on how to use this organic fertilisers as against using inorganic pesticides and fertilisers which have serious implications for human and environmental health and even our economy because many of our products are being rejected in the international market due to excessive use of pesticides.

” And also we are trying to help our farmers produce food in optimum quality as well as doing so to get enough for our growing population because the common narrative is that Nigerians are hungry and so we need to produce a lot more food to, so by these, farmers would be able to get enough productivity.”