ActionAid Ghana calls for increased agriculture spending

Accra, June 9, GNA - ActionAid Ghana, a non governmental organisation, on Thursday appealed to government to focus its agriculture budget and spending on the real needs of smallholder farmers, especially women.

Speaking at a Stakeholders Workshop on Ghana's Agriculture Spending,Dr Queronica Quarley Quartey, Policy Advisor on Right to Food and Climate Change, said agriculture spending needed to undergo a reorientation to ensure that women farmers had equal access or were assured of a certain percentage of the budget.

There is also the need for agriculture research programmes to be reviewed and aligned with increasing productivity of crops grown by women through the development of new varieties.

Dr Quartey was presenting a paper on the topic: 93Ghana's Agriculture Spending: Improving the Focus on Key Services and Women Farmers."

The workshop aims at discussing ways to enhance public financing of small-holder farmers, especially in this era of increasing food price volatility and hunger.

Dr Quartey also touched on extension services to farmers, saying current problems faced by farmers in accessing the service needed to be solved.

According to her, extension service must be driven by increasing food security and crop productivity, providing focused support to different categories of farmers.

She called on the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to be accountable on how it was addressing some of the challenges in the sector and called on the Joint Sector Working Group to agree on a definition of agriculture spending in order to monitor spending and improve budget transparency.