The story of every farmer on the field is full of tales of many challenges, sacrifices, and few successes. Every success recorded comes with a huge cost paid. Every day, a farmer is paying this huge cost in every corner of the World to ensure that food is produced — the right quality and quantity. Most times, these sacrifices (also known as real costs of food) outweigh the gain from the proceeds of food sold. There is a need to bring down the real cost of food to help the farmers maximize their efforts in actual production activities.

Interestingly, there have been many interventions and supports provided by the government, multinationals, NGOs amongst others for farmers but has yielded little due to various factors such as political instability, inconsistent policies with changing realities, unaligned interests between donors and the beneficiaries, poor project planning and implementation, unsustainable model during implementation amongst others. The situation has caused ripple effects increasing the cost of food drastically and the problems remain unsolved. Farmers are still faced with the challenges of accessing quality inputs, access to credits to scale production, access to new technology, and access and control over market forces amongst others. These challenges are big bottlenecks that have contributed to increasing food inflation (including rising security challenges in some agrarian communities). Therefore, we need to tackle these challenges head-on. With a strong political will and business mindset, we can develop and implement policies that can help farmers strive and thrive better. Sadly, the current intervention or charity mindset will not take us to the desired results.

As stakeholders in the agricultural sector, we need to accept our current realities and learn from them to forge a promising future for our farmers and our food system. More prospering farmers are a testament to the thriving agriculture sector and more sustainable businesses. Farmers do not need to live in poverty for them to be labeled farmers. We need to change the narrative where more farmers are prospering through agriculture, and also achieving food security. Both can co-exist as we need more collaborative efforts to build an enabling environment for them and us (especially the future generations).

Let the future start today!