Following the economical crisis and level of hardship in the country, Mrs Bamidele Abiodun, the wife of Ogun State Governor, called for support for women farmers, on Thursday.

She said this while speaking at a two-day agritech empowerment programme for over 150 women farmers in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State.

Abiodun stated that conscious and deliberate efforts from the governments and other stakeholders would help to achieve sustainable development goals of eradicating poverty, boosting food production while also achieving zero hunger.

The governor’s wife stressed that despite the fact that women accounted for about 70 percent of farmers in the country, they were still very poor and had no access to funding unlike their male counterparts.

The Agritech training was put together by the founder of Adeola Azeez Community Care Foundation, Mrs Adeola Azeez.

Abiodun stated that, “While women play a dominant role in most value chains, the financial gains of women in these sectors is still much less than men.

“This is primarily because while women make up a larger per cent of labour force in agriculture, they are less likely to be the one paid for production, especially among small holder farmers.

“They are also less likely to get access to finance even though studies show that investment in women in agriculture has higher likelihood of success, higher impact and returns and if given as a loan. There is a higher repayment rate.

While lauding Mrs Adeola for putting up the training, Abiodun said that the roles of technology in agriculture in changing the fortunes of the women farmers cannot be overemphasised.

Welcoming the participants to the training, Azeez, the CEO of the foundation, said that the training was put together to commemorate this year International Women’s Day.

She noted that she had always used the yearly occasion to celebrate women in each sector of the economy.

Azeez explained that her focus this year was to empower the women farmers through training on various technologies that they could deploy to improve their socio-economic fortunes in agriculture and boost food production.

She, however demanded that government and other stakeholders should set up interventions that would help the women farmers conquer the challenges of lack of access to funding, global market, land, machineries and other farming inputs, which were having adverse effects upon their farming enterprise.

“We are gathered today to celebrate our women’s efforts in promoting a better society through agriculture and food production.

“We are gathered to collectively empower the women in agriculture through the transformative power of technology,” she asserted.