The All Farmers Association of Nigeria has appealed to the Federal Government to compensate farmers for losses recorded during the implementation of the Central Bank of Nigeria naira redesign and subsequent cash crunch.

The farmers made the plea in an interview on Saturday in Lagos while reviewing the impact of the policy on food production and agribusiness.

They said that the compensation became necessary to encourage farmers to return to the farms.

The farmers said the compensation could be in form of grants, inputs, fertiliser and farm implements.

“Majority of the farms are situated in the rural areas where there is little or no presence of commercial banks so they had to travel long distances and spend more money in order to buy naira from Point-of-Sale operators to pay the farm workers,” he said.

Oke said it was a great problem because many of the farm workers rely on daily payment because they don’t have bank accounts.

“Many farmers could also not transport their farm produce such as pepper, vegetable and other perishable items to the market due to lack of cash and patronage from customers.

“The situation led to loss of farm produce right before the eyes of the farmers. It was a sad sight to behold.

“There’s nothing more agonising, discouraging and painful than watching your farm produce and hard work go to waste without any solution,” he noted.

Oke urged the FG to compensate for all these losses caused by the ill-timed policy.

“We want the Federal government to take action by assisting us with grants with interest rate as low as five per cent.

Also speaking, Mrs Adewunmi Malik-Adeola, a livestock and crop farmer, urged the FG and CBN to engage farmers in future to prevent needless losses recorded during the implementation of the naira redesign policy.

Malik-Adeola noted that there was poor information about the policy in the rural areas where majority of the farmers reside.

She lamented that information on the policy’s modalities, take off and implementation was not available.

She added that concerned stakeholders must be educated on government policies to prevent loss of investment which could lead to sickness or even death.

“We are stakeholders and we need to be carried along whenever a new policy is introduced.

“One of the reasons why the programme failed was due to lack of information and how farmers and the general public can prepare ahead.

“It really destroyed a lot of our farming activities during the period, especially the livestock, our birds and eggs,” she said.

Francis-Fagoyinbo, a cassava processor and packaging farmer, said that a lot of her produce was destroyed due to poor sales.

She urged the government to come up with programmes that would ameliorate the damage in the sector.

“Right now, as I speak, some of our farmers in the farm are calling me that the garri they have processed there’s nobody to buy it and the ones they have lost they cannot recover the money.

“Smallholder farmers rely on the profit they make on their produce and turn it over. We also paid a lot to manual workers on our farms; we have to buy money to pay them cash because they don’t accept monetary transfer.

“At the end of the day, everything was a waste, what we paid double for, we could not sell them.

“It was a very serious issue for my family and I. There was no business or market during the period and I lost some of my fish in the process because fish cannot stay long.

“I was able to survive through the help of my children, there was no sale, my money was trapped with customers and in the banks.

“It was not a good experience for me because I could not buy feed to feed the fish, transfer was not going through, everything was a disaster. So, I lost many of my investments in the process.

“Government needs to support and compensate us for all our losses,” she said. (NAN)