By Favour Nnabugwu

Farmers in the country are singing difficult tones about the N200billion agricultural loan meant for them which was only accessible to few as many farmers were left out.

Vanguard investigations revealed that only a few large scale farmers accessed the N200billion loan while majority of the small scale farmers in the country had their hands short out of the loan.

Farmers who spoke at the two-day conference on ‘Financing Agricultural Value Chain in Sub-Saharan Africa’ organized by Union Bank of Nigeria in partnership with International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropic (ICRISAT) in Abuja recently relayed their experience.

Mr Olusola Akanmode, managing director of Gamut Farm in Kogi State said that the Union bank and ICRISAT conference has opened up a new vista of opportunity. I

According to him “It is good to come to a conference like this to speak and also hear people speak about the practical problems we farmers are facing on the field”.

He relieved, “I am coming from a background of a civil servant and an administration and l go interested in farming because of the agricultural initiatives that were taken by former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration when in fact l was serving as a deputy chief of staff and went out there to put some of the initiative into practice and l encountered a lot of difficulties”.

“When the CBN came in with the policy of financing large scale farmers l made a go at it and ended up being more impoverished because the conditions were so stiff and l had spent a lot of money trying to meet the conditions and l do believe from what the CBN said at the conference and what Union Bank said, we may at last get to some points where we can remove some of the road blocks”

Akanmode who was a former Deputy Chief of Staff lamented, I could not access the N200billion loan because the conditions were to stiff. They wanted an organization that have N250million farm related asset and it is not easy even for me in spite of all the advantages that l though l had, was difficult how much less the other farmers who has serious disadvantages”.

“I could have access to traitor even for leasing  in my state so the truth f the matter is that for you to go into large scale farming, you have to have you won traitor, bulldozer  etc”