‘With the rising cost of living, eating one meal a day has become a struggle’

Mrs Josephine Pattern spoke with Saturday Tribune after some hesitatioin. She’s one one of the industrious Urhobo women whose means of livelihood wholly centre on subsistence farming at agrarian Oviri Olomu, Ughelli South Local Government Area of Delta State. According to her, apart from finding it difficult to provide one meal per day for her family of five children and a husband, the incessant destruction of her cassava farm by cows is a major headache.

At 50 years old, Josephine has been farming for as long as she could remember. “I have been farming since I knew what life is about,” she said. Farming is her identity, a paradoxical source of both pride and frustration.

She is a mother of five and the wife of a fellow farmer, and together they have spent their years cultivating the land to provide for their family. Life for Mrs Pattern, according to her, has become far harder. Despite decades of hardship, she remarked that life is now more difficult than ever before.

“With the rising cost of living, eating one meal a day has become a struggle. The simple things that once provided sustenance, like garri and rice, have become luxuries. “For us to eat garri now is a luxury, not to talk of rice: It is alarming how the prices of foodstuffs have skyrocketed in just a short time.

“As of January last year, you could get one cup of rice for N150, N200, but now, it’s being sold for N600. “Beans was being sold for N150 but now you can hardly get it for N400. The inflat.