By Funmi Ajumobi

Chinasa Asonye is the National Secretary of the Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria, SWOFON. She is also the CEO of Chielo Farms and President of the Ogbonge Women Multipurpose Agricultural and Cooperative Society. In this interview, she speaks on the impact of her Village Savings and Loan program, VSL, on female farmers.

The world just celebrated International Women’s Day in March, can you highlight specific areas women farmers have made an impact on?

International Women’s Day has always made a positive impact on women as we are able to join the team advocating for inclusion in everything that we are doing.

In line with the theme, IWD has always helped us to come together to make sure our voices are heard, especially in policy decision and policy implementation so that the government will understand the issues we are facing and know that we are farmers and that they need to understand what we need and that we should be involved in decision-making especially policy decisions.

How have cooperatives helped over 400 women farmers in your association?

Joining agricultural multipurpose cooperatives has helped the farmers, especially the Ogbonge Women Multipurpose  Agricultural and Cooperative Society. Looking at where we started in 2014, as an offshoot of Oxfam and ActionAid, we were introduced to Village Savings and Loans. In 2017, we started with 25 farmers, and today, we have more than 400 women farmers.

This encouraged the women to form another group where we introduced other women who formed VSL2, and that is how we have grown from VSL1 to VSL11 and now going to VSL12 and 13.

Aside from that, we have also gone to different local government authorities to establish Village Savings and Loans. That is something we use in galvanizing and bringing the cooperative together. This is because, as a cooperator, you must understand that there must be something you are doing that brings your members together.

In this economic situation, how are women farmers coping?

Women farmers have been facing a lot of challenges right from the time of COVID-19. It took us 10 years back from what we have been advocating for. In fact, we never knew we were going to survive. So, if women farmers could survive COVID-19, I believe we will be able to survive whatever challenges we are facing.

The economic situation is discouraging. There is a consistent increase in the price of feeds, but that would not stop us from doing our business. We have to look at how we could reduce our cost of production so as to make profit.

This is the time to look for alternative ways of doing our business. There are other things that can be used.

Since women have been at the forefront of farming, the expectation is that it will help in the food supply chain and will ease the high cost of food. What’s actually happening? It seems homes are not really feeling the impact?

Women have been at the forefront of farming. Women constitute 80% of the labour force, and we want to change the narrative that women farmers are rich people. Farming is our profession, and we must continue to advocate for supply of inputs to the farmers.

The issue now is not about women going to the farm but security. Women farmers are now afraid of going to their farms for fear of being raped and kidnapped. Our farms are no longer secure.

That is the reason for the consistent hike in the prices of food.

The number of people going to the farm has reduced drastically. Bandits have taken over the communities. Herders are also waging war on farmers.

There are grants for farmers. Is there financial inclusion for women in agriculture in the country?

This is what we have been advocating for. The grants are given through different NGOs.  You must be qualified, belong to a cooperative and must have been in existence for 3-5 years with a business project.  Banks do not give loans to farmers because they believe farmers would not be able to pay back. 

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