The Farmers’ Community in Rivers State has said it has moved its monthly Saturday’s farmers’ market online as result of the lockdown in the state.
A representative of the group speaking on a radio programme said they had to move the market online because they were not allowed to meet and sell farm produce due to the lockdown.
The representative of the farmers’ community said the group was made up of 140 members who are farmers and agro entrepreneurs and agricultural producers.
The representative said: “How we have gone is that we’ve gone monthly Saturday’s farmers’ market at the creative hub but due to the lockdown in market why we are not allowed to gather anymore, we have moved our services online”.
She said that farmers get their produce from mostly within the state except for agricultural products like strawberries and tomatoes and other agricultural goods which come from northern part of the country.
The representative of farmers’ community said before the lockdown around 200 people would come to the monthly Saturday’s market but since they moved services online they now cater to around 500 customers in a week delivering agricultural products to their homes.
She said sixty per cent of those in the community own large-scale farms with others owning small-scale farms with middlemen along the chain.
She said people would place orders and what they ordered would be delivered by the farmers’ community online market.
She said prices of agricultural goods on the online market were low saying they were out to render service and not make huge profits.
The representative said she took the initiative to bring together farmers and agro entrepreneurs because agriculture had huge potential all over the world.
She said agro producers process agricultural produce into products to reduce the wastage in the agricultural value chain.
She appeared to say the group was looking forward to working in partnership with the state government or representatives in government to supply essential agricultural products under the lockdown.
Talking about her initiative, the representative of the farmers’ community said: “Agriculture has huge potential all over the world and I noticed that Rivers State was pretty quiet. Nobody was really talking about the potential in agriculture (and) youths were not looking in that direction so I decided to pull them together into a community and start working with them and then pull the interest of more youth into agriculture”.
She said that they work with delivery companies to deliver agricultural products placed on order to customers’ doorsteps.
