Story: Mary Ankrah
Ghanaian farmers have called on political party leaders to capture the interest of smallholder farmers, especially women farmers in their manifestoes for election 2012.
They said political party manifestoes must show their strategic vision to increase productivity.
Smallholders farmers made this call at a forum held by ActionAid Ghana in collaboration with Green Earth Organisation on Thursday, in Accra.
The forum under the theme: “Smallholder Agriculture Sensitive Manifestoes and Party Pledges to Reduce Poverty”, sought to engage smallholder farmers across the country to articulate some of the challenges smallholder farmers, especially women were facing to political party leaders in order for them to reflect them in their manifestoes and policy documents for election 2012.
It is expected that some of the issues raised would enable the political parties to include in their manifestoes and policy documents ways to address those problems and demands so that Ghana would achieve enormous growth in agriculture to improve the living conditions of farmers and Ghanaians as well.
According to the smallholders, inaccessibility to credit facilities, poor road network, lack of equipment and irrigation facilities and lack of storage facilities had been identified as some of the major challenges facing women farmers.
Also, they said failure to adequately recognise women farmers was retarding food production and poverty reduction in the country.
This, according to them was because women are the key actors in the Ghanaian farming, constituting over half of the agricultural labour force and producing 70 per cent in food distribution.
Despite that, they said there was no budget allocation specifically targeting women farmers apart from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) budget allocated to women in Agricultural Department (WIAD).
Speaking at the forum, the Treasure of the Farmer Base Organisation (FBO) in the Upper West Region, Jirapa District, Ms Galyuoni Clarissa indicated that despite the enormous efforts made by women in agriculture, only two out of 100 female headed households get extension services and one out of the eight policy statements in the gender and agricultural development strategy of MoFa, was operational.
She therefore appealed to political parties to increase public spending on smallholder agriculture and make a separate budget dedicated to women farmers, adding that affirmative action of 40 per cent of agriculture resources should be targeted at women.
Highlighting some of the demands of smallholders’ women farmers, she said political party leaders needed to fully implement the gender and agriculture development strategy, including provision of secured land; extension services and labour-saving agro-processing equipment; increase public spending to recognise unpaid work of women smallholder farmers in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and involve them in more decision–making processes.
“If all those things are done, there would be sufficient food available throughout the year; food would be less expensive, and we would be able to provide raw materials for industries as a result sustain some income for our household”, she added.
Adding their voices, the Chairman of the Upper East Regional Farmers Association, Mr Andrew Bukari emphasised that politicians and political party leaders needed to concentrate on women farmers to increase their productivity because inspite of their busy household schedules, they still try to put food on the tables of Ghanaians.
“When our women have the necessary equipment, training and resources like some of the men farmers, they would increase their produce better than us since they do most of the work on our farms”, they expressed.
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