Farmers, fund and the mafia

The notion some people have about the Sikaman farmer can be amusing. It is the belief of some that immediately a struggling farmer manages to grab a loan, the first thing he does is to invite his abu­sua (kith and kin) home and abroad.

He organises a mini-festival using palm wine mixed with Guinness as the first course. There and then he announces that he is no longer a poor man; in effect he has ceased to be the close buddy of Mr John Poverty.

The ceremony will be consum­mated with singing and breakdance, a brief church service, drama and poetry recitals.

At least three bearded goats complete with moustache and four cockerels would be sacrificed in vari­ous recipes to celebrate the farmer’s broken alliance with poverty. Some would end up as fufu and light soup, grilled chicken, toasted mutton and smiling goat-head pepper soup. In short, the loan was well taken and well utilised.

The farmer’s prosperity begins right from the stomach. His idea is that if you don’t prosper in the stom­ach, there is no way you can prosper outside it.

Some farmer are ‘wiser’ though. When they get the loan, they prompt­ly look for new wives. They can no longer continue enjoying one soup everyday like that. Variety is the spice of life! A new wife would bring new zest, new hope and heavenly glary into the farmer’s life. Most impor­tantly the new wife would bring more action into his waist.

So the loan goes indirectly into promoting physical exercise for the human waist instead of the expansion of the farm, purchase of new equip­ment and improved seeds. Farmers of this nature are jokers, not farmers.

Is it probably because of these whimsical reasons that the banks are reluctant to grant loans to farmers? Obviously with the celebration of mini festivals and the installation of new wives, it is unlikely bank loans can ever be repaid. Of course, farmers who are more concerned about their libido can only be experts in re-sched­uling loan payments and not in paying back loans.

Banks are very much concerned about getting their monies back with interest whenever they give out loans. So they demand collateral security as a requirement for the granting of loans. Some farmers actually don’t have anything they can put up as collateral except their hoes, cutlasses and wives. So they struggle through life, not going and not coming.

I do not blame the banks for not granting loans to those who cannot put up collateral. But what about those who are very serious farmers and can put up collateral. Should they also be denied?

Farming is seasonal and a farmer may need a loan only within a certain period to grow crops or breed birds. When the period elapses before the loans are granted, farmers are tempt­ed to misapply the money because it lies idle. In fact, with idle money lying around, the farmer may be tempted to ‘purchase’ a new wife.

It goes without saying that farmers need money but for specific periods when the banks apparently do not take into consideration. Within three months in a year (main cropping season), a crop farmer must plant, nurture, harvest and sell. He applies for a loan and takes nine months or is not even granted. Meanwhile the money lies under his bed waiting to be enjoyed. Not all farmers are angels.

Now, If the government has seen and acknowledged the importance of farmers in national development and has instituted a Farmers’ Day which is a public holiday during which farmers are awarded, then government might as well also do something about fund­ing for our serious farmers, at least the award winning ones to expand and grow since bank loans are not readily available.

Lama of Site 21, Tema, a man of great learning and of vision, has just been telling me that when a farmer gets an award, it means he knows his way about his job, is serious and diligent. According to him, most likely that such a person would also be investment-conscious and judicious in the use of his resources, and not interested in enstooling a new wife.

If government can set up a fund to assist, not with cash but by way of inputs, most of our farmers who have not had any assistance to propel themselves above sea level would be most thankful.

Interview a few award-winning farmers and they would tell you their palaver. The Overall Tema Municipal Farmer Mr Ellis Aferi and his wife Mrs Rosemary Aferi, began their Soka Farms Complex with ten fowls. The pig (a sow), was sent to a farm on a cart to be serviced and brought back breeding.

His piggery is now a real mod­el of inspiration. “We started right from the scratch without any bank loan or financial assistance from any quarter. We placed our trust in labour, hard work and the advice of extension officers. Today we have a large piggery, poultry breeding house, mushroom and snail quarters, fishpond and beehives aside the rabbits we breed. All these without a penny from anywhere,” Mr Aferi told me just last week.

However, he bemoaned the current situation farmers are facing “We have exploited our creativity, our imagi­nation and our muscles. There is a limit to productivity using only human labour and ingenuity. We now want to grow bigger but without funding there is little we can achieve in our bid to grow and develop.”

Mr Aferi like, his colleagues, uses about one ton of wheat bran to pre­pare feed for his birds, pigs, snails and fishes every week. When Food Complex was in operation, they had their wheat bran without problem. Today, there are mafia connections in the wheat bran trade.

According to all the livestock farmers I’ve spoken to, it is hard to get wheat bran from GAFCO or Irani Brothers directly. They allege that the companies prefer to sell to some wealthy women and top business-men who can buy wheat bran on condition­al basis (that is together with flour and other products of the companies), than to farmers.

Then these women and business­men through their agents resell the bran to the poor farmers at cut-throat prices. I don’t think the system is be­ing fair to farmers. It is indeed a trag­edy for the farmers who through their sweat and blood the nation is fed.

“We protest heart and soul,” one farmer yelled at me as if I was re­sponsible for their plight. “How can I feed my birds and pigs satisfactorily if I cannot get wheat bran at the fac­tory price? We disagree that because we are poor, things should be made difficult for us. The rich must not be allowed to exploit us like that.”

The proprietor of Soka Farms, Mr Aferi, for instance has risen from the discomfort of the dust and hardness of the earth to such an enviable height to be an award winner who now holds seminars for farmers, students and officials of organisations on his farm near the Ashiaman-Michel Camp bar­rier. He must be propped up, even if not with money with inputs on credit basis.

The government must think about setting up a special fund for such indi­vidual farmers to grow, while prevent­ing them from cheats and those in the cloak of the mafia.

This article was first published on Saturday, September 21, 1996