KUCHING: The State Farmers’ Organisation (SFO) will visit Area Farmers’ Organisations (AFOs) throughout the state more often to help resolve whatever problems they might be facing.
Its chairman Datuk Sylvester Entri said this was necessary to motivate the office bearers and members of the respective AFOs.
“We want them all to recall and fully understand why such organisations were formed, and also we want them to know the benefits they will get by joining as members.
“We believe that only if they fully understand the objectives of forming SFO and AFO, for that matter, that they can move forward and focus on achieving the goals, which is to improve the socio-economic status of the farming community,” he told The Borneo Post when interviewed at Wisma Pertubuhan Peladang here yesterday.
Entri, who is also Assistant Minister of Modernisation of Agriculture (Farmers’ Organisation), said generally all 28 AFOs in the state, which have a total of 161,000 members, were doing very well, but there remained still rooms for improvement.
“Our aim is to improve the living standard of our farming community through AFO, and to achieve that first and foremost the AFO board of directors (BOD), as well as all members, should be proactive and progressive.
“They must try to think of new and better ways on how they can further increase their yield and income using only minimal input. On our part, we are encouraging a programme that we call trading within the farming community by helping in the marketing and networking.”
He said that AFO members must also be proactive, and try to explore and identify new areas, especially in developing entrepreneurship involving agro-based products.
“In this context, we urge all AFO to work closely together, particularly with the Agriculture Department, so as to keep abreast with government policies.”
He also said that members of the organisation, especially the BODs, must realise that they were actually the pillar of strength for farmers.
As such, they should always strive to improve their knowledge and skills so as to be role models for farmers in the state.
“Another very important fact is we want to let everyone know that farmers who join the organisation will be able to get lots of benefits. One of them is they get equally high quality agriculture inputs at much lower prices.
“As a result, AFO members will be able to make bigger profit margin for their products compared with non-members. This is the beauty of joining the organisation, and we encourage those who have yet to register themselves to do so.”
He said that recently the SFO visited the AFO in Kalaka and later in Pantu to give motivation to their members and to find out their problems. He explained that the programme would be intensified.
Also present at the interview yesterday was SFO general manager Peter Umak @ Peter Unggik.