By Shuaibu Zubair Tatu ,Birnin Kebbi
An environmentalist and Senior lecturer in the Federal University, Birnin Kebbi (FUBK), Dr Zuni Aminu said middlemen in agriculture has keeping farmers in a vicious cycle of poverty in the country
Aminu disclosed this in an interview with Authority newspaper correspondent in Birinin Kebbi yesterday
” Middlemen on agriculture is detrimental to poor farmers who are largely engaged in subsistent farming because they are often short changed by the ” big players ” who buy their produce at the end of farming season, hoard them and later released in to the market at higher cost, thus keeping these farmers in a vicious cycle of poverty .
” The real profit goes to the middlemen who buy up the farm produces at almost give away prices and sell them at outrageous prices to consumers ” , she said.
She explained that middlemen raised prices for consumer while underplaying farmers,leaving farmers poor and unproductive, farmers encounter high production cost in their effort of boost production but hardly get fair pricing of their produces from middlemen.
Aminu further said government should try to eliminate the roles of middlemen in agriculture because the activity of middlemen it necessitate threat to food security in the country and government should buy those produce from farmers at better price than what middlemen offer.
The senior lecturer has urged government to involved in the provision of effective storage system through the building of modern storage facilities to reduce the problem of the wastage of harvested agricultural crops.
” This would carried out through the construction of large silos for storage of grains and thus promote the availability of stored grains for future use and prevent an acute shortage of agricultural crops over a long period of time’ ‘, she said.
She added that government should train extension workers meet with the farmers to disseminate new farming techniques in order to improve their outputs ,this would help to educate the farmers on new ideal because middlemen is taken the advantage of poor farmers .
Aminu further said if farmers are well trained and educated the middlemen would not be able to exploit them saying that middlemen to be exploitative rather than facilitating marketing function and average farmers view
the middlemen as an opportunist and cheater.
