Amina Garba has been farming groundnut and yam in Tayi B in the Bosso Local Government Area of Niger State for over 20 years. But in all these years, she has not gotten any form of fertilizer, either free or at a subsidized rate from the Niger state government.
Her yearly yield is thus very poor as she makes barely half of the expectation she aims to meet, a reason she attributes to lack of fertiliser and other inputs used in farming.
“Our lands are old and tired. Every year, we farm on these lands and we do not have fertilisers or other chemicals to put into the land to make it fertile and healthy. We have not gotten any fertiliser from the government, even the one said to be at a reduced rate, we do not get it. And we do not have money to buy fertiliser because of how high it costs,” Garba said.
Fertilisers are substances used to add nutrients to the soil to promote soil fertility and increase plant growth. The three most important fertilisers include nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The latter two have been available for centuries, but nitrogen in a form that plants could absorb is scarce, and the lack of nitrogen has led to low crop yields for centuries.
Fertilisers replace the nutrients that crops remove from the soil. Without the addition of fertilisers, crop yields and agricultural productivity would be significantly reduced. To grow healthy crops full of nutrients, farmers need to ensure they have healthy soil.
Amina is not alone in the difficulty women farmers face to get fertilisers across the state despite the huge sum of money budgeted and expended for fertiliser procurement and distribution in Niger State.
In Bosso local government, Rose Joseph explained that whilst groundnut does not need much fertiliser, yam does.
