In this telephone interview, Mrs Joyce Tarka, Woman Leader, All Farmers Association of Nigeria, AFAN, Benue State Chapter; one of states leading the pack in the commercial cultivation of tomatoes, discloses reasons behind the scarcity of the commodity and dispels reports of a widespread pest, Tuta Absoluta, which some claim is presently destroying tomato farms across the country.

By Josephine Agbonkhese

What’s responsible for the ongoing    scarcity and hike in prices of tomatoes?

•Mrs Joyce Tarka

Naturally, at this time, tomatoes are not many in the market because this is not its harvesting season; except for those doing irrigation farming—which alone cannot serve Benue State. Not to mention other parts of the country where our tomatoes are taken to.

However, the scarcity is remarkable this time because less planting was done in the last planting season; and of course, the mop up of the available tomatoes by tomato paste manufacturing plants which have just opened up in the country.

If our women planted much more, knowing that they will have a market for their products, the scarcity wouldn’t have been this enormous. Before now, you would farm and not even have the market to sell your products. When you visit most of our local governments in the past for example, you’ll see women throwing away their tomatoes at the close of market day.

We used to plant a lot of tomatoes. But at the end, because they were neither stored nor preserved, what we usually ran into were wastages. With some of these industries cropping up, we will be encouraged to plant more tomatoes again this planting season. But I assure you that as long as we don’t have storage facilities, or even markets  where we can sell our products and not have to throw them away (because nobody wants to farm and throw away),  this scarcity may reoccur.

Tomato wastage in Nigeria

The wastage in tomatoes is as much as the volumes planted in Nigeria. What we are advocating now is for government to make available storage facilities or even market so that when we plant, we sell them and not run at a loss. But the situation we have here is terrible; you farm and take your tomatoes to the market, and then the people coming to buy from Lagos or wherever wait until evening and then start pricing your produce far lower than its actual value because they know it will surely rot if you do not sell them off quickly.

You cannot take tomatoes from your house at a transportation cost of N200 for example and then someone comes to give you N150 for it. It’s very unfair on local farmers. That’s why most of us are planting less of tomato and going into other crops instead.

Reports came in last week that a pest, Tuta Absoluta, is what is eating up tomato farms across the country. How true is that?

There’s nothing like that in any of our farms in Benue State. Nasarawa and Plateau too do not have such as far as I know.

Talking our preservation, but Erisco and Dangote are already into tomato paste manufacturing; although Erisco has his own tomato plantation anyway…

Before their advent, the status quo were those issues highlighted above. Dangote in particular was already helping to buy a lot of our tomatoes. That was very encouraging. We also hope that when we plant more this season, he will mop up more so that even those doing irrigation farming will be encouraged to do more to ensure everyone also gets affordable fresh tomatoes when needed. Otherwise, planting and having a total waste is not funny at all.  We do hope that these wastages will cease as more people like Dangote venture into tomato paste.

But then, we also hope people coming to buy as middle-men will give us value for our products as they buy to go and also make money. And I hope government too is looking critically at what is going on because it might spill into other products in the future. We need more factories for food storage and preservation. If we have storage facilities, perishable goods such as tomatoes can be stored until when needed.

Ways government can avert further food shortage

Government should consider having a specific budget for women in the agricultural sector because women are the ones who actually farm. In Benue for example, 90 percent of the farmers are women. If the budget is available and rightly implemented, we can work harder to feed our country.

Also, farm inputs should be critically looked at because when the Ministry of Agriculture sends inputs to states, some of these inputs do not get to people who actually farm as at when due. The problem of machinery is also there. We should be able to have machines that are gender-friendly. Not tractors which will require a lot of strength to operate. There’s an example of a power tiller in Nasarawa which women cannot easily operate.

Meanwhile, there exist machines which women can use effectively. Security is a major problem too right now. Herdsmen are walking through our farms with their cows and destroying all what our people have laboured to do.