Ogun moves to protect farmers’ rights, resolve to work with regulators

The Ogun State Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security says it is ready to work with relevant legislative bodies and regulatory authorities to consider law that will protect farmers’ right, while promoting accountability and sustainability to further ensure food security.

Bolu Owotomo, the State Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Security stated this at a Forum held in Abeokuta, Ogun State Capital on Policy Engagement and Stakeholders’ Dialogue on the adoption of Standard Weights and Measures for farmers in the state, organised by Federal Government/Ogun State Government and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Value Chain Development Programme.

Owotomo, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Kehinde Jokotoye, said the State Government is committed to facilitating a structural policy dialogue involving stakeholders in the Agricultural value chain such as farmers processor, marketers, regulators and development partners.

The Commissioner stated that 97.1% of the farmers were willing and ready to adopt best practices if Government could take up guidance and policy to support them, saying it was essential for them to understand the importance of standardisation and how it would directly improve their incomes and business.

He explained that the dialogue was necessary for setting a clear guidelines on the adoption and the use of standard weights, with mechanism for enforcement to ensure compliance, disclosing that 353 farmers had been trained on standard weights and measures towards ensuring the adoption of the concept by the state through the Value Chain Development Programme.

“The programme has trained 353 farmers till date on standard weights and measures, the upscaling of the training is still on-going among farmers and we will see to it that it gets down to all farmers in the state”, he said.

In her remarks, Fatima Aliyi, National Programme Coordinator, VCDP, represented by Agama Sunday stated that standard weights and measures would eradicate every forms of cheating and enhancing development and sustainability.

Earlier, Temitope Ajisafe, Ogun State Programme Coordinator, explained that the stakeholders’ engagement forum was to ensure that objective of standardisation was achieved for the benefit of farmers.

In his contributions, a resource person, Samuel Adeogun maintained that the advantage of having policy on standard weights and measures was to allow the state to be in tune with international best practices in agricultural production and agri-business, as well as encourage produce upscaling.

Responding, two of the participants, Bolaji Johnson and Olukemi Adebayo lauded the efforts of the present administration towards ensuring the availability of standard scales and weight measures to enhancing equity, fairness, and accurate transactions across various market in the state, to further promote food security.