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Summary
Farmers in rural Nigeria are increasingly using organic fertilisers and pesticides to grow farm producers. They emphasis it is a cheaper and more sustainable solution which also helps to mitigate climate change.
Ms Elizabeth Ndako has been a smallholder farmer for many years. She grows grains and tubers in Patigi, Patigi Local Government Area of Kwara state. To boost her production, Ndako spends close to N300,000 on agrochemicals to increase productivity and keep farm produce from pests. “Normally, I spend close to N300,000 on fertiliser and herbicides yearly if I do not want to waste my farm inputs.
“This is always a Herculean task for me yearly because after buying these things, we have little or nothing to feed on before the things we planted grow,’’ she said.
At one point, however, this woman farmer could not afford the money, as the price of fertiliser kept increasing due to Nigeria’s economic situation.
Ndako started using chicken poop and spoilt foods as a means to an end when fertilisers were no longer affordable for her, but ironically, they ended up giving her more yields than expected.
“I have been using chicken poop and plant waste, which I later learnt is called organic fertiliser, for the past eight years, and I have never for once regretted it. It gave me a higher yield than when I was using chemical fertiliser.
“Another thing I noticed while using it is that the soil is not easily washed away when it rains compared to when I was using the chemical fertiliser,” she said.
This experience resonated with other smallholder women farmers responsible for the bulk of food items in the market.
As the world grapples with the global economic and food crisis and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nigerians are not left out in finding means to ensure food security and sustainability.
Women farmers play a key role in household food security and nutrition. Empowering female farmers can increase the availability of diverse and nutritious foods, improving family and community health.
Nigerian farmers face several constraints, such as limited access to education, land, credit facilities, and poor distribution networks. These constraints result in low yields and a high wastage rate during harvesting, processing, and storage, reducing the available food supply and rural women’s income.
With the hard means of survival and difficulty in feeding, more Nigerian women have gone into farming to feed themselves and their family members before they see it as a money-making venture.
Surprisingly, as many farmers are investing in planting and harvesting, based on the World Bank projections, about 40 per cent of Nigerians are estimated to still live below the international poverty line by the end of 2024.
Just like other developing countries, poverty in Nigeria is highly gendered. Although women make up about 50 per cent of Nigeria’s population, more than 60 per cent of them live in extreme poverty, majority of them are rural women.
Incidentally, the category of rural women is where the Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation of Nigeria (SWOFON) members are. They farm basically to feed their immediate family and sell the remaining proceeds to earn a living. However, with the high cost of fertiliser and herbicides, they suffer setbacks on their farms.
Their quest was to find an alternative to straining their lean purses to improve their yields. Little did they know that they were working towards climate change mitigation.
Succour, however, came the way of some in Nigeria when, in 2020, the Centre for Community Empowerment and Poverty Eradication (CCEPE) trained women farmers on using dung and plant wastes as organic fertiliser and pesticides.
CCEPE trained 40 women farmers in the Asa local government area and 20 women farmers in Kaima local government of Kwara state on how to make and use organic fertilisers and herbicides on their farms.
CCEPE Executive Director Mr Abdurrahman Ayuba said the training was organised in light of the ravaging impacts of climate change and the economic status of women farmers.
“We tend to look at alternatives to the high cost of farm inputs and how to support these women in sourcing locally for their farming business without necessarily negatively impacting their income and the little money they have with them.
“By the time they use half of their income to procure fertiliser, which is not readily available, and also source expensive agrochemicals like pesticides and herbicides, they have little or nothing left to feed,” he said.
Ms Ndako, who is also the SWOFON Coordinator in Kwara, said that although organic fertiliser has enormous advantages, it is slow to respond compared to chemical fertiliser, but the wait is always worth it.
She appealed to the government to help create more awareness and education about organic fertiliser, which is more affordable for those in rural areas.
One of the beneficiaries of the training, Ms Sadiat Rasaki, from Omole, Asa local government, said the organic herbicides they were taught to use using neem leaf helped her restore her farm, which was almost consumed by insects and pests.
“The training on herbicides was an answered prayer at that time because insects took over my farm, and I couldn’t afford chemical herbicides, but when I used neem leaf the way we were taught, it was as if nothing happened to it before.
“Surprisingly, it didn’t affect the farm produce by the time they were harvested because that was my initial fear.
“That was what made me try to use the organic fertiliser as we were taught to because I did not believe it could work.
“The year I first used organic fertilizer was the first year I had a bountiful harvest which are also good looking,” she said.
Another beneficiary, Alhaja Titi Ade-Salam, said that prior to the training, she used food remnants as fertiliser and ashes as herbicides, but she didn’t know the benefits accrued to it other than the fact that it saved her the cost of purchasing fertiliser, which is almost N200,000 yearly.
“We had the belief that chemical fertiliser is the best, but we were told that it makes the soil infertile and that organic fertilisers improve the soil fertility.
“For herbicides, we were taught how to use neem leaves and black soap, and for fertiliser, we were told to use chicken poop, goat poop and food remnants, but I have been using food remnants before the training.
“Using organic, my farm produces now have good yields and look attractive and greener than before. It is pocket-friendly and easily accessible; compared to the chemical ones, the cheapest is N5,000.
“I urge farmers to make more enquiries about it to assess the benefits and also ensure that we are eating right from what we planted.
The trainees, however, did not keep the knowledge to themselves. As a secondary beneficiary, Hajia Sherifat Ibrahim, from Ilorin South local government, said she learnt from one of the participants that biodegradable wastes can be used as manure.
Mrs Ibrahim said she gave it a trial when she couldn’t afford fertiliser (costing about N250,000) to boost the maize and vegetables she planted.
“Then, I bought five bags of chicken poo for N1500, and the maise and vegetables I planted them with, became the envy of my community members.
“Even my mentor in farming was surprised, and he had to ditch the chemical fertilizer he bought for the organic ones as his maize has small seeds compared to my own. I had to give him out of my harvest that year.
“The maize looks like the premier seeds, very big like what we used to call Farmer’s seed then.
“We need more awareness because this will go a long way in reducing the financial strain on farmers and, at the same tim,e help the environment to be safe.
“The challenge we have regarding it now is that a bag of chicken poop is now N5000 per 100 kg, and it is always heavy to carry for us as women,” she said.
Another secondary beneficiary, Mr Funmilayo Lawal, who farms in Odoore, said she used chicken poop on a section of her farm where she planted vegetables to test the efficacy and was surprised at how well they turned out.
“I was not part of those that were trained, but our members told me that organic fertiliser makes farm produce really green and with big seeds.
“I have up to a hectare of farm, so I used it on a particular section and used chemical fertiliser on other parts to see the difference; I discovered that the organic works better than the chemical, though the result is slow compared to when the chemical one is used.
“I use it mostly to plant tomatoes, Okra and vegetables, and the difference is very clear.
“My farm is in Odoore, and I plant rice, maise, guinea corn, beans and vegetables. I sell most of my farm produce and consume just little, but I often give out vegetables after taking what I want.”
Highlighting the importance of organic fertilisers and herbicides to the environment, Dr Sa’adat Yusuf of the Department of Crop Protection, University of Ilorin, who was the training facilitator, said the use of organic fertilisers and herbicides was long overdue in the face of climate change’s effect on crops.
She said organic fertilisers and herbicides are boosters that are not based on chemicals but naturally occur, which helps to address the issue of resistance to chemicals.
“When you use chemical fertiliser and herbicides for a long time, it will get to a point when the pests and the soil become resistant to the chemicals, and it will no longer be effective.
“Also, it is environmentally friendly. When you use organic products, the environment becomes cleaner, the plants used to develop the crops are degradable, and by the time they decompose, they improve the fertility of the soil.
“Then they are pocket-friendly because neem leaves that we experimented with, can be gotten almost everywhere. So, at the end of the day, it improves the profit margin of the farmers,” she said.
The university don said the farmers were trained on how to use neem leaves and seeds.
“The major ingredient we used during the training is Neem leaves. We trained them on how to use neem to produce fertilizer and to protect crops against pests.
“They were taught how to use neem plants to protect their crops, starting from the leaves and seeds and extracting the oil in order to protect their stored produce.
“The residues were also incorporated into the soil to serve as fertiliser to improve the soil fertility,” Dr Yusuf said.
She, however, called on the government to key into it by producing these organic fertilisers and herbicides in large quantities so that more people can key into its usage.
“The government can establish factories where they will produce these things on a large scale and pack them for the farmers to begin to buy just like they buy the chemical fertiliser.
“This will go a long way to promote the usage of organic fertiliser and pesticides,” she said. (NAN) (www.nannews.ng)
This story is done with support from the Solutions Journalism Network (SJN) and the Nigeria Health Watch (NHW). It was first published by BO News.
