In Pictures: Nigeria’s Hardworking Women In Agriculture
Published on March 3, 2015by Hon Taiwo
At
this local palm oil processing mill, farmers boil, ferment and press
the palm fruits to extract the palm oil that is poured into drums and
taken to the big markets in town. Sometimes, the buyers come to book and
pick up their drums of palm oil when business is good, though this not
usually the case
Eighty
percent of women in Ekuku-Agbor town are farmers and, in more ways
than one, also traders, Says Charity Ebuniwa, 30, “my husband and I do
oil palm farming together. He harvests them from the palm tree while I
gather the bunches for processing.
Evelyn
Michael is taking out boiled oil palm fruits from the fire to be
processed into palm oil, usually manually, and always by women.
The
production line is quite long but these women do so much for so long
that they go home everyday, tired; and of course they age very fast due
to many factors
Twenty-three
year old Bidemi Kehinde, straps her baby to the back while working of
the production of palmoil in an oil palm mill in Ajose Camp, Ondo State,
Nigeria
These
women, young, middleaged and some in their 60s, combine both farm work
and produntion of local oil palm in an oil mill belonging to Mr. Kayode
Toluwalase at Ajose Camp near Ore town in Ondo State, Nigeria.
Elsewhere,
Christiana Onybie, mother of seven, lost her husband to a malaria
infection and has been supporting her children through farming and
casual labour jobs in a local oil palm mill.
Mrs.
Veronica Atuye (left) and her two daughters, Patricia (right) and
Chikwadi (left) peal cassava tubes they harvested from their farm in
Agbor town, Delta state
Mrs.
Philomena Achafor returning home with sacks of cassava harvested from
the farm in Ekuku-Agbor town in Delta State, Nigeria. She rides her
motorbike to her farm located some kilometres away and comes back home
to make garri from the cassava after processing the tubers
Esther
Ijeabo, 54, frying garri, a staple eaten in southern Nigeria, at the
back of her house in Ute Erumu town in Agbor, Delta State, Esther has
been in the business since she was a young teenager
After
many years of back-breaking farm work, Mrs Maria Omebiye, 60, with
little or no healthcare provision by the government is currently
suffering from waist pain and arthritis.
Women
farming is more than palm oil and cassava. Here, Roseline Gabriel
(right) and her colleague in Ilutuntun camp Odigbo Local government area
in Ondo State prepare kolanuts for sale at the big Ore market. The work
is often tedious and monotonous and with very little profit
Funmi
Toluwalase, breastfeeds her toddler, Femi while Ayo (left) and Tope
wait for their father at 7:33 pm. Mr. Kayode Toluwalase will bring home
the harvest on his motorcycle while (his wife and sons will follow on
foot) after the day’s job on their farm at Ajose camp near Ore in Ondo
State
Even
with Nigeria’s unreasonable dependence on only oil to run her economy,
many more exports abound. Mrs. Mary David, mother of six harvesting
cocoa in her plantation farm in Ilutuntun camp in Odigbo Local
Government Area, Ondo State
Group
of women who do different kinds of work on farms around Ute Erumu town,
Delta State. These women work as pickers and palm kernel breakers
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