The National President of Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON), Mary Afan has bewailed the inability of smallholder farmers’ to access agricultural insurance cover particularly, for women rural farmers in Nigeria.
Afan revealed this at the side line of the Validation of Community Participatory Assessment of Government Expenditure on Agriculture/Community Score Cards on Smallholder Women Farmers Access to Agricultural Insurance Services in Nigeria.
According to her, insurance is a major problem to small holder farmers as many women in the rural area do not have access to insurance covers that will indemnify their projects even those who have, the insurance companies do not respond when risks occur.
“We have numerous challenges with insurance covers as most of these insurance companies will not even show or build the capacity of the farmers. I’m even surprised that insurance is supposed to cover when you suffer losses in your farm.
“As soon as you access funds, what they are interested in is to deduct their percentage which is 2 per cent for the insurance cover but when issues or risks occur, may be flood, they will request for pictoral evidence from us only to tell you did not build proper drainages and that is why the disaster happened”.
“For instance, in cases of animals like poultry, if we report to them that our birds are dying, they mostly blame us for negligence, saying we did not give them enough ventilation and this is never true. We need insurance covers for our businesses to thrive,” she noted.
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