Small-holder farmers want recognition

SMALLHOLDER farmers in the country have called on the government to introduce social safeguards to ensure their well-being and future development.
They contended that although the government had put in place several interventions to enable them to boost agricultural productivity, more should be done by way of social safety nets which would guarantee their physical and social development into the foreseeable future.
Expressing those concerns at a National Farmers Day forum organised in Accra on Thursday by the Christian Council of Ghana for smallholder farmers and fishermen drawn from the Ga South, Dangme West and Yilo Krobo districts, the smallholder farmers called on the government to implement an appropriate policy framework, including the establishment of a fund, as well as social protection measures, to help improve their livelihoods.
Mr George Osei-Bimpeh, an official of SEND-Ghana, a grass-roots civil society organisation that champions good governance in the country, who made a presentation on, ‘Investing in smallholder farmers and its relation to food security and the National Farmers Day’, said one of the major difficulties the farmers faced was lack of access to the needed credit to expand production.
He stated that the poor investment given to smallholder farmers had rendered them incapacitated which, among other things, accounted for the country’s failure to achieve the six per cent growth in 2006.
Mr Osei-Bimpeh, whose organisation conducted a study on the state of smallholder farmers in the northern part of the country, expressed regret that the absence of facilities to enable the farmers to operate all-year round was impeding their operations.
He, therefore, underscored the need for tractor services to be extended to the farmers to boost their yields.
On the way forward to arresting the dejected state of smallholder farmers, he proposed a financing scheme for the farmers to be backed by a separate budget to ensure regular release of resources.
Another speaker, Mr Ibrahim Akalbila, the Co-ordinator of the Ghana Trade and Livelihood Coalition (GTLC), who spoke on, “Challenges of smallholder farmers, the way forward and how it interferes with food security in Ghana”, said smallholder farmers produced about five per cent of the country’s food needs and that the farmers, who were mainly categorised into subsistence-oriented and commercial farmer groups, needed to be the focus of attention.
An official from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Mrs Eunice Adams, informed the farmers about some interventions the ministry had put in place to address their concerns.