Smallholder women farmers in the Upper East Region, Ghana, have been encouraged to integrate sorghum and soya beans into their farming activities to take advantage of the huge and ready markets and improve their livelihoods.
Mr Elvis Kuudaar, the National Facilitator of Forest and Farm Facility of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nation in-charge of Ghana, said there were market opportunities, especially for sorghum, soya beans, maize and fish and advised them to integrate such farming practices into their activities.
He gave the advice in an address to the Maltaaba Women Peasant Farmers’ Cooperative, a vegetable and tree growing farmer group at Yakort in the Nabdam District when he paid a working visit to some Forest and Farm Facility project sites in the Upper East Region.
Mr Kuudaar encouraged them to diversify their farming activities build their capacities to engage in buying and selling to companies such as Guinness Ghana, which is in dire need of sorghum for production of Guinness and other related drinks.
He assured the women of his outfit’s readiness to support them with mechanized boreholes to go into such activities and added that they would ensure that all the communities were engaged to increase production.
He mentioned specifically that majority of the landmarks in the five regions of the north were endowed with water, which could be tapped for all round farming activities instead of relying only on dams, which sometimes dried up and disappointed farmers.
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The National Facilitator, who proposed to government to consider such interventions in future instead of relying solely on the One Village One Dam projects, charged the beneficiaries of the project to initiate the process by diversifying their vegetable farming to include sorghum, soya beans and maize to use that as the basis to attract more support from FAO.
“With underground water and this type of diversifications involving the entire community, you as smallholder farmers could produce three times as much in a year, thereby making more for ready market, to help you improve upon your livelihoods. This is what the project is interested in,” he stressed.
Mrs Banininmah Touah, the leader of the of Maltaaba Peasant Women Farmers’ Cooperative, thanked FAO for supporting the women who were mostly widows and single parents and said through many of them had been able to sell the vegetables they harvested from their farms to help cater for their family, including paying school fees and National Health Insurance Premiums for their children.
She, however, appealed for an overhead tank to help irrigate their large tracks of farms and also fencing materials and gave the assurance that they would integrate Sorghum, Soya beans and maize farming into their vegetable farming activities.
Madam Lydia Miyella, the Executive Secretary of Maltaaba Peasant Women Farmers’ Cooperative, said the support the women farmers got from the facility had empowered them to procure a mechanized borehole for farming, particularly during dry season.
She said instead of using chemical fertilizers, weedicides and Pesticides, which had dangerous effects on the soil fertility, the plant and some water sources, the project had additionally built the capacity of the group to use alternative means such as animal dropping, grass, including plant stocks to make compost manure for framing.
