Ebonyians applauds Govt decision to establish farm settlements

The decision of Ebonyi State government to boost food production by encouraging establishment of farm settlements in the state has been considered as a wise thought.
Salt FM reporter Samuel Nweke recently visited one of the already existing farm settlements in the state, known as Ozara Okangwu farm settlement, Amasiri in Afikpo North Local Government area from where he filed this report.
The Ozara Okangwu farm settlement was founded by the federal government in 1971 to resettle returnees from Equatorial Guinea.It was located at a border between Oso Edda, Amasiri and Mgbede Akaeze in Ivo local government area with about five thousand residents.
Due to inability of the Federal Government to maintain the settlement in area of provision of basic infrastructure, the initial occupants of the farm settlement abandoned the settlement.However, due to the arable farm land, some farmers from different communities from the state gathered to live at the settlement despite absence of basic social amenitiesWhen salt FM reporter visited the farm settlement which is about six kilometers away from Amasiri Town it was observed that the residents were predominantly farmers with poor living condition.
A community leader in the area, Pastor Idam Ogbonnaya who spoke in an interview said the community needed the assistance of government to boost agricultural production through provision of improved seedlings, mechanized farming, processing machines and access roads for evacuation of their farm produce.
Pastor Ogbonnaya said the community majored in rice, cassava, groundnut and palm oil production in commercial quantities but regretted that poor road network and other factors had adversely affected their farming activities.Other residents of the farm settlement, Mr. Ogbonnaya Ogbu and Chief Ogbonnaya Anya explained that high cost of transportation owing to bad state of their road and absence of functional market in the locality had hampered their production.
They said a situation whereby a farmer spend between one thousand and one thousand five hundred naira on motor cyclists to transport their commodity to the market was regrettable.The farmers promised to increase their production if basic infrastructure were provided for them assuring that food products from the settlement were capable of feeding the entire state.
Meanwhile, the Ozara Okangwu farm settlement which has over three thousand hectares of land with over five thousand inhabitants has one functional primary school, with few teachers, no health facility, one water bore-hole and total absence of electricity, a situation which the residents said made it difficult for them to process or preserve their food products and appealed for government’s intervention.