By Seedy Darboe
Farmers are expressing dissatisfaction on government pricing on groundnut sales this year as they started crossing border to Senegal to sell their groundnut products.
Speaking in a voice interview, Bolong saidy said: “his year, government is buying per kilo of groundnut for 18 dalasi and 18, 000 dalasi per ton, while local dealers are buying per kilo for 25 dalasi and 25, 000 dalasi per ton.”
He said that Senegal has better pricing on groundnut than The Gambia and that “if one compares the pricing, you will go to Senegal to sell your groundnuts.”
According him, with the type of offers government is giving is not encouraging we the farmers neither the young ones that the government is encouraging every time to go to farming but looking at it how can they go for farming when there is no enough farming material available for them, like the seed of groundnut is very expensive, the manure and farming equipment’s etc. . All these have to be look he said.
Malang Njie also a farmer said groundnut cultivation has being the only source of revenue for him but that “its trade is becoming less profitable many farmers he said decides to leave and depend on other financial ventures.”
He said: “if the government want to discourage youth to stop taken the back way and venture in agriculture t they must invest in agriculture.”
This is too disappointing looking into how we suffer in the farms for years and government doesn’t care about our plights, he said.
Agriculture is to contribute more than 60 percent to the country economy and more than half of the country’s population live on agriculture.