During a visit to some women-dominated small-scale food processing centres, the situations confirmed economic and infrastructural relegation of female stakeholders.
As of the time of filing this report, they sourced water from shallow wells in the neighbourhood, and the situation gets aggravated in the dry seasons as the climate change takes its toll on the water availability. Women and other workers also peeled the roots under the scorching sun. Mrs Bisi Ogunsola, a cassava peel aggregator at the centre, also explained that Tradermoni, a pet project of the Federal Government to empower traders and women, especially in the build-up to the 2019 general elections, did not get to them.This, according to her, deprived women in the centre of means of expanding their operations. She called on the government to empower them with credit facilities.
At Kila, a border town between Ogun and Oyo State, where mostly women add post-harvest value to crops, drying and frying the grated products was cumbersome. Streams were sources of water, and there was no storage facility. This exposes the by-products to contamination and food poisoning, and likely infestation of Lassa fever.
A lecturer at Lead City University and rice processor in Ibadan, Dr Nike Olagunju, in an interview with The Guardian on challenges of women in agriculture and food processing, disclosed that smallholder farmers take the larger percentage of the farming business, where real farming and outputs are done.“At least, statistical literatures reveal that about 90 per cent of domestic producers are smallholders.
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