SWOFON Highlights Maize-Waste Charcoal as New Income Opportunity for Women Farmers
The Small-Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria (SWOFON) has highlighted the potential of converting maize cobs into charcoal as an alternative income source for smallholder women farmers, urging stakeholders to support grassroots innovations that promote food security and improve rural livelihoods.
The initiative, which transforms agricultural waste into a useful product, demonstrates how women farmers can create additional economic value from farm by-products while making productive use of resources that might otherwise be discarded.
In a message to mark World Food Day, SWOFON celebrated the ingenuity of women farmers adopting the practice, noting that such innovations could help diversify household income and strengthen their financial capacity.
The organisation also identified Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) as an important mechanism for helping women farmers mobilise funds, support their families and improve their capacity to withstand economic difficulties.
It, however, stressed that the potential of these initiatives could be better realised through increased investment in appropriate technology, digital literacy, practical training and agricultural extension services.
According to SWOFON, providing women farmers with these resources would enable them to improve their production methods, expand income-generating activities and turn locally developed solutions into more sustainable ventures.
The organisation maintained that indigenous knowledge remained valuable to agricultural development and should be integrated with modern technologies to improve productivity and build more resilient food systems.
It called on governments, development partners and other agricultural stakeholders to recognise the economic potential of women farmers’ innovations and provide the technical and financial support needed to expand them.
SWOFON said empowering smallholder women farmers would deliver benefits beyond individual households, with the potential to support rural economic development, improve household nutrition and strengthen food security.
It urged stakeholders to use World Food Day as an opportunity to invest in practical, community-driven agricultural solutions, emphasising that women farmers were not only producing food but also finding creative ways to reduce waste, generate income and make agriculture more sustainable.
