By: Nyima Sillah
Top officials of the Master Farmers’ Cooperative Association said the level offertilizer in supply could not meet the demandof farmers, highlighting that any delay in making the input available to farmers would be negatively impactful on the performance of crops.
The association’s secretary-general AmadouBah and its PRO Modou Leigh told this reporter that the inability of some of their members to access fertilizer on time could negatively affect yields.
Bah said since the government’s announcement of the availability of fertilizer in the country, farmers in his region could not access enough of it.
“Fertilizer is available in the country but it’s not enough because today if you want to havefertilizer, you must queue and wait for days. We used to buy fertilizer at the Seccos around our area but this year, you must queue to have fertilizer. So, that shows that fertilizer is not enough,” he lamented.
Bah explained that the application of fertilizer to crops is timebound and that failure to apply it on time can blight the growth of crops. He bemoaned the lack of fertilizer at some Seccosas it obtained.
Meanwhile, the Master Farmers’ Association’s PRO Mr. Leigh said the association could not leverage initial fertilizer support from SDF because GGC had told it that fertilizer wasn’t available.
“This was very tough and frustrating for us. Why would the government announce the availability of fertilizer when they didn’t have enough of it? We had to borrow D1M from one of the banks just to buy fertilizer on our own. It is still unfortunate that despite paying that money, we still don’t get fertilizer as there is still no fertilizer in the depots,” PRO Leighstated.
According to him, their desire to promote the agriculture sector has galvanized them into investing their resources in it to buy inputs to complement the efforts of the government. This, he added, should prompt the government to render support to them whenever they are in need, especially during crucial times like now
“The issue of fertilizer still reminds me of a huge challenge in the country and we don’t see support coming from anywhere to lessen the predicament. Masters Farmers Association has a presence in all the six regions of the country and I believe that we should, at least, have fixedplaces to buy fertilizer whenever the need arises,” he highlighted.
