With Kehinde Oluwatayo,
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Farming has been described as a profitable enterprise capable of making anyone who is practising it rich provided everything required is available.
A cassava farmer, Mrs Mercy Igoni who disclosed this in Akure noted that farming though requires a lot of energy and needs endurance said the time of harvest is a time of celebration for farmers.
While saying land and fund are the major requirements for farming, Igoni said small holder farmers can only feed themselves and their families and may be have a little to sell.
According to him, when you have access to land and fund, you will employ people to work for you adding that she employs people to work for her.
When asked why youths lack interest in farming, Igoni said they lack the knowledge and cannot endure adding that the reward of farming does not come immediately.
“Someone like me has started farming from my childhood. There is no aspect of farming that I can not do. I can clear, I can heap ridges and so on. In fact, I do bulk of the work by myself
.”These youths, when you employ them to work for you, after few hours, they complain of tiredness because they did not do it when they were young”, she stressed.
Igoni who described the activities of herdsmen as a major challenge said part of her farm was destroyed by fire forcing her to harvest the cassava in it.
“These herdsmen are our major challenge. I wish something can be done about it. In fact, part of my farm was set ablazed recently, thank God the cassava on it was ripe. I quickly harvested everything, processed it and sold it” she said.
She called on government to make land and fund available so that farmers in the state can go into large scale farming to boost food production.