Hunger looms, as potato disease blights crop, threatens value chain in Plateau

THE production of Irish Potato, a staple food in the country, has run into trouble with a strange disease that now ravages the crop and threatens to render farmers jobless and trigger hunger and starvation in the process. Farmers in the state are worried because potato cultivated in Plateau State has been used for local consumption an export before the attack was reported in the state this year.

The disease, simply identified as ‘tomato blight’, ravages farms, stunts the growth and production cycle of the crop and affects the yield of the produce in the end, leaving farmers with little or nothing to show for their investments at the end of the season. The immediate implication is that the produce is scarce and costly wherever it is found in the state, which is noted for all-time availability of the cash crop and at affordable rate.

Many of the farmers, who are shocked by the negative development, have wondered what may have triggered the misfortune, which has opened a hole in their finances and drawn them back in the production of the commodity, which industrialists depend on for the production of other foods.

The situation has however been blamed on faulty agro-technology, weak seedlings, lack of knowledge of blight symptoms and innovative methods of control, lack of timely access to quality inputs and high cost of inputs such as fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, among others.

In the aftermath of the setback, farmers in the state have pleaded with the state government to take proactive measures to remedy the situation to avert a major food shortage that now looms as a result of the disease outbreak.

“The Chairman of Potato Farmers and Marketing Association, Pam Chuwang, who spoke to Arewa Voice on the outbreak of the strange disease, pointed out that urgent action was needed to be taken to salvage the situation in the interest of food security.

Chuwang said: “Our members are badly affected by potato late blight, in some farms no potato was harvested. The potato value chain is not helping us, the process was to involve all stakeholders including the government but as far as my Association is concerned, we have not felt any impacts of the value chain.“

“We were asked to bring names of members so that we can have financial assistance to be able to produce, to market and train for better production but nothing has happened. With this blight issue, we have not heard anything from them. We buy improved seedlings from the open market; we thought the government would come up with an arrangement that would assist farmers to buy at a cheaper rate.“

“More worrisome is the cost of fertilizer and fungicide which we buy in the open market. Government agencies like the Plateau Agricultural Development Programme and others can intervene while government at all levels should assist by providing the inputs at the right time to ease our plights and provide food for the people.

But Mr. Thomas Muopshin, the Project Coordinator for African Development Bank-supported Potato Value Chain Project in Plateau State, has explained the number of interventions the agency is embarking upon in order to give succour to potato farmers in the state.

“The project came on board in November, 2017 but became effective in 2018 and has three components which are fixing of 200 kilometres of rural roads that will help farmers to move their products to the markets, constructing 26 water basin structures for irrigation so that farmers can farm throughout the year and 17 spring captures to help in the irrigation and we have constructed nine community markets which the farmers demanded.

“We have nine diffuse light stores for the storage of the potatoes which can last for about one month so that they don’t incur losses. We have also constructed three processing centres along the value chain so that there will be uptake of the potatoes from farmers to reduce gluts.”

“It is unfortunate that blight is happening now. It happened before and farmers abandoned potato farming to go back to maize. We got agro dealers, trained them together with the ADP and National Roots Crops Research Institute and we bought a product that is controlling the potato late blight and it solved the problem and production was improved until this year. The disease happens during periods of high humidity in the rainy season which is around July, August and that has been the pattern except this year where the blight took place earlier and you see these losses.

“In trying to solve the problem, our project has a tissue culture laboratory which has been constructed and is being equipped to produce clean, healthy potato seeds which will help farmers to have quality seeds at affordable cost. The federal government is also building a tissue culture laboratory at the National Root Crops Research Institute in Kuru while the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, has come up with a small modular tissue laboratory.