Female farmers constitute about 17.5 per cent of the farming population in Nigeria but still battle with a lack of access to loans, funding, lands, and modern farming equipment amid the devastating impacts of climate change. JANET OGUNDEPO writes
For over 30 years, farming has brought joy to the heart and food on the table of a rice farmer in Gombe State, Malata Nittiwa.
Seeing her family savour the food from her farm has been her delight, spurring her to persist despite the challenges she faces in the industry.
Being a woman, Nittiwa could only rent whatever available portion of land she was able to find in the rural areas each farming season.
This year, Nittiwa could not get land to rent and couldn’t partake in the wet season farming.
While the farmer was able to get land and could farm the previous year, the late arrival of the rain and seeds reduced her harvest.
To compensate for her loss, the rice farmer is thinking of venturing into the dry season farming but the lack of funds has her arms folded.
“It would have been better to compensate with the dry season farming but dry season farming could be very expensive because that will have to attract watering and use of water pumps and generators and what have you.
“I would love to be part of the program, but I don’t have the big fund with me now. That is the problem. Hopefully, by the grace of God, I will try to get a fund,” she said.
If Nittiwa were a male farmer, her worry over securing funds would have been less as she would approach her association, the bank, or other colleagues for loans.
But, “Female farmers are often denied soft loans. The male farmers are often given soft loans to help them, but they don’t always support females,” the rice farmer said.
She added that the restricted access to loans and government intervention put further strain on their farming options, thus affecting their profits and productivity.
A member of the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria said she was no longer allowed at the group’s meetings.
The reason, she told PUNCH Healthwise, was due to “religious segregation and gender inequality, they don’t often call me for the meetings or anything.”
Nittiwa’s exclusion has violated her right to association as enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution 1999 (as amended) and against the National Gender Policy.
The gender policy
The National Gender Policy was developed in 2006 and was reviewed in 2021. The policy presents a rights-based approach to achieving gender equality, women empowerment, and social inclusion and promotes programs that must be developed against an understanding of international commitments and constitutional agreements.
The policy further defines gender equality as the equal enjoyment by women and men of all the socially valued goods, opportunities, resources, and rewards afforded by one’s citizenship.
However, the awareness of and domestication of the NGP at the state, local government and private organisations have been slow.
The revised NGP further reports that only six states had developed and approved a Gender Policy.
Despite the NGP, socio-cultural practices still prevail in communities, preventing women from benefiting from the provisions of the policy.
A paper presentation on “Gender equality in agriculture: What are really the benefits for sub-Saharan Africa?” by Adamon Mukasa and Adeleke Salami listed discriminatory factors affecting women farmers as land constraints, which include small land size, unequal land tenure systems, and property rights.
It adds that the low application of modern inputs, limited access to advisory and extension services, low stocks of human and physical capital, and exclusion from credit and financial markets.
The study further showed that the gender productivity gap in Nigeria was 18.6 per cent.
They asserted that when the gender productivity differentials were closed, it would yield 2.8 per cent productivity gains, subsequently raising monthly consumption per adult equivalent to 2.9 per cent.
The study concluded that improving women’s access to land, chemical fertiliser, improved seeds and pesticides, reforming land discriminatory laws and closing women’s gaps in technology; agricultural finance and human capital may help to achieve gender equality.
Non-implementation of gender policies
A professor of Agricultural Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Valerie Asanwana, decried the non-implementation of the gender policy at both the national and state level, advocating the need for a strong political will to implement policies that will grant equal access and equal opportunities to men and women.
The researcher noted that a study she conducted revealed that when women knew their rights, they were still afraid of the cultural implications of claiming those rights.
She added that this created fear in the women to pursue their rights, leaving them at the mercy of the cultural systems despite the NGP.
Socio-cultural practices limiting women
A Women’s Rights Advocate, Josephine Christopher, stated that societal practices such as lack of access to education, assets, and inability to have inheritance, among other vices, were responsible for women’s financial exclusion.
She further decried the lack of mainstream gender considerations and existing gender gaps in credit facility requirements for women farmers.
Planting instead of harvesting
For a cassava farmer in Kogi State, Joy Abudu, the unsteady early rainfall this year has made some maize farmers who were supposed to be bringing in their first harvest begin to plant for another.
She noted that the early seeds planted were affected by the rain, leaving the farmers at a loss.
When the rain later fell, it came in torrents and swept away some other crops in flood.
Despite the impact of climate change, the tenacious farmer would love to continue farming on a large scale, but the few farm inputs and the lack of available laborers put her at a loss of what to do.
“Female farmers need a lot of input. The government should please encourage us with little input so that we can use it on farms.
“Many younger ones are running away from farming. One cannot get labourers to work on the farm; this is always a problem. You know, as a woman, we are weaker, so we don’t have the strength as that of a man who can decide to do it by themselves. But if the government will help us with some insecticides, sprayers, watering cans, and maybe when
it’s time for the dry season, a pumping machine, women farmers will do better in Kogi, and enough food will come to the market,” Abudu said.
When asked about previous government interventions, she noted that only a few farmers benefitted from those given at the Local Government levels.
The cassava farmer further alleged, “Some people come from Abuja to write our name, collect our account number, even snap our farms saying that we will be given some things. Up to today, we’ve not seen them. Women farmers need more inputs.”
President Bola Tinubu in September directed the Ministry of Agriculture to distribute 2.1 million bags of fertilizers to small-scale farmers across the country.
But a farmer and agricultural expert, African Farmer Mogaji, questioned how many per cent of the fertilisers was allocated and would get to the women farmers.
Unjust climate change
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations stated that the climate change crisis was unjust for rural women.
It adds that due to increased heat, female-headed households lose eight per cent more of their annual income than male-headed households.
Flooding is further estimated to decrease female-headed household income by three percent compared to their male counterparts.
These figures further reflect the impact of climate change and how it affects women farmers more than their male counterparts.
Affected by drought
Another woman farmer in Doma, Nasarawa State,Mrs Victoria Ogoshi, described the impact of climate change as devastating.
She noted that this year, the drought affected most of the crops, adding that only rice farmers were able to harvest a few bags.
“Two years ago, we also experienced flooding in our community, and many crops were destroyed. Some farmers lost their farmlands completely,” Ogoshi said.
Continuing, she said, “But the women farmers suffered the most because our strength is not like that of the men. Some women could not even go back again because that may be the only farmland that they have.”
Like Nittiwa and Abudu, women farmers in Ogoshi’s community cannot acquire land for farming except to rent one.
The lucky few who inherited the land from their parents were those able to lay claims to a land of theirs.
Since most women could only rent lands, Ogoshi said they were unable to access loans as land ownership was a requirement.
“Most of the time, it’s not what you plant that you get, since you are not in control of everything,” she opined.
The farmer also complained about the high cost of getting laborers to work on women’s farms.
She pleaded with the government for more intervention programs targeted at rural women farmers to ensure improved productivity and harvest.
Create conducive environment – Expert
Christopher, the WR advocate, further noted that the impact of climate change amid rising levels of insecurity and limited resources had further worsened the situation for rural women.
To mitigate these, Christopher said, “Closing the access to finance gap for women in agriculture is very significant and can bring about the change we want to see in women’s financial inclusion.
“Governments, policymakers, and financial institutions should create an environment that is more conducive to women in agriculture accessing financial services mainstreaming existing socio-cultural factors that leave them with little access to economic resources.
“International organisations, donors, and policymakers can prioritise actions that would contribute to improving the access to finance of women in agriculture.
“There is a need for partnerships to facilitate access to technical and business skills through value chains, NGOs, and other civil society actors that drive financial inclusion for Nigerian women.”
She urged the women farmers to demand access to resources to enable them to have ownership and self-drive their growth to close the existing gender gaps in financial inclusion.
Christopher called on the government to prioritise women’s financial inclusion as key to growing GDP and accelerating national progress for all.
Disadvantaged rural farmers
Speaking further, Professor Asanwana further stated that men and women farmers in rural areas were both affected by lack of access to modern farming tools and the impact of climate change.
However, the don noted that while women farmers have access to land, they do not have control over it as the men farmers do.
Consequently, women farmers do not get to decide on the type of crops to plant or need to change the farming location when affected by the impact of climate change without the permission of a significant male.
The researcher on Gender and women issues in rural livelihood and climate change said,
“This inability of women to have control perpetrates poverty and in a poverty situation, the impact of climate change is more aggravated. So that also affects all of us. So if you want to mitigate the impact, then you need to bring women out of poverty and give them a voice.
“How do you do that? We have a lot of policies that are supposed to allow women to be able to inherit properties and land and be able to do whatever they like with their land, but they have not been implemented. So we have the problem of implementation of policies.”
Asanwana further supported the establishment of special measures to ensure women’s access to information, improved technology, and participation in decisions that affect them and their communities.
The don called for “a proper reorientation for men, as men and gatekeepers in our communities, so that they will be able to appreciate the benefit of women being granted access and control over resources.
“In the long run, I would believe that a more permanent solution would be to uproot what I would call the facilitators of the social, economic, and cultural factors and mechanisms that keep women, generally, and women farmers in particular, in a situation of disadvantage and subordination.”
Asanwana further proposed the “bottom-up gender deconstruction model, in that we introduce gender issues to our children, right from the home. As gatekeepers, we understand that female children are equally important; they have equal rights and should be given equal opportunities.
“If this plan becomes part and parcel of these children when the male child becomes the village head tomorrow, he will not say the female should not inherit because right from when he was a toddler, he has imbibed the value and is gender-sensitised.”
She encouraged the women farmers to support one another and avoid viewing each other as competitors.
The don also urged women farmers to belong to groups and cooperatives and, with that, access loans, lands, improved technology, and invent ways to adapt and mitigate the impact of climate change.
No value for farmers –Expert
Continuing, the agricultural expert, Mogaji, alleged that farmers were seen as tools and did not add value to the economy at the state and local government levels, stating that this had hampered the growth of local farmers.
He maintained that it was only at the federal level that both male and female farmers were recognised as value addition to the economy.
The farmer decried the situation, stating that it was worse with the women farmers.
Try river basin farming
Offering solutions, Mogaji said, “We need to have successful pilot programs and they have to work around river basins. Why river basins? Because river basins exist in every state of the nation and about 95 per cent of the river basin projects are situated in rural communities, mostly unbanked communities.
“You would hardly see a bank in most of the communities where you have the river basin projects? The only thing you will see is a microfinance bank which would be far from the project sites.
“Most of these River basin projects have dams or reservoirs that can be used for dry season farming, but most importantly is that the river basin projects in these rural communities are operated on a rental basis. This means that any woman can go to the river basin and say “I want to rent two and a half acres and they can walk in with their cash and walk out with an allocation.”
He emphasised that more focus should be on women around the River basin with an existing system where they can go and pay and have access to land like the man.
Mogaji stated that this method would resolve the lack of access to land challenges women farmers faced.
He further noted that since most river basins have tractors, women farmers could commercialise their operations by renting equipment, hiring available labourers and logistics.
Speaking on access to funds, Mogaji called for women advocacy groups that would be a genuine voice for women farmers, thereby ensuring that they were prioritised in agriculture interventions.
“The solution is to raise a voice and become sign boards. To say this is a location, there’s a river basin there, can you fund women? Now, President Tinubu gave 2.1 million fertilizers out, and this shipped out in trailers. How many got to women? How many people spoke out that women need it? Most of the championing women groups are also using them for media and international recognition. They will talk as though they are doing things for the women, but really, they are doing it for themselves.
“We have women talking about women, but you don’t have women who have scaled or are scaling so that the women can look up to be beyond an advocate. How many women are actually doing what they are saying? There’s a place for advocacy, but when it gets to a point nobody’s holding the women to scale, it’s always intervention,” he said.
The agricultural expert emphasised the need for a robust ecosystem for women, advising them to expand their focus to value addition around contiguous farm locations.
Agric Ministry mum
When PUNCH Healthwise contacted Joel Oruche, the Director of Information, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, about measures the ministry was embarking on to ensure increased allocation to women farmers, he promised to get back to our correspondent.
He had yet to do so before filing this report.
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