Agric entrepreneurs urge government divestment of farm storage facilities

Some agriculture entrepreneurs have urged the Federal Government to immediately divest its 1.6 million tonnes of farm storage facilities to enhance participation of private sector in agricultural businesses.

Speaking to the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Monday, they said that divesting the facilities would promote agricultural marketing.

Sonny Echono, permanent secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, had on July 14, said that the government had contemplated the transfer of those facilities for effective management.

Ahamba Christopher-Umana, a businessman, stated “Agricultural marketing covers the services involved in moving an agricultural product from the farm to the consumer.’’

Christopher-Umana further said that numerous interconnected activities must be addressed to manage such facilities effectively, adding that “these processes are better handled by private sector’’.

Akira Omenje, owner, Omenje Farms, Keffi, Nasarawa State, said that it was high time the Federal Government empowered private farms in an attempt to reduce wastage in the food value chain. “The country requires trillion tonnes of such storage facilities to be built by government and transferred to interested individuals through outright sale or leases. Good number of private farms had sprung up and we have new ones springing up daily because of it profitability. But we could be used to solve the wastage in the sector.’’

According to him, the process of divesting the facilities must be made faster and transparent. On his part, Musa Zambi, a farmer, said that farmers in the country had remained poor because of absence of storage facilities in rural areas. Zambi said: “beyond transferring the existing ones, new ones must be dotted in rural communities. Rural farmers must be encouraged to form cooperative societies to take ownership.’’

Shelly Tagom, a warehouse manager,  said that he would take advantage of the storage facilities “if it is be profitable’’. Tagom added that the sector must be repositioned to encourage wider participation because the agricultural sector remains the mainstay of the families in the country. He noted that the development would intensify efforts to increase outputs from various farms across the country as well as encourage more people to return to farming.