Implement agric policies to benefit small holder farmers

A platform of Upper East Regional Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Agriculture has challenged government to implement agricultural policies that would inure to the benefit of smallholder farmers.

The CSO platform met in Bolgatanga to deliberate on challenges militating against the performance of smallholder farmers, food security and ways to push the agricultural agenda for the country forward.

The meeting was organized by SEND Ghana, an advocacy organization in Collaboration with Trade Aid Integrated.

Miss Nana Aisha Mohammed, Project Officer SEND Ghana, said the platform provided CSOs in Agriculture the opportunity to highlight agricultural issues and how they affected smallholder farmers.

She said the regional CSOs engagement would articulate concerns that would help them to remove the bottlenecks and as a regional focus work towards improving small older farmer performance.

She indicated that government budget allocation to Agriculture was inadequate, and could not enhance performance of Agriculture, and stated that concerns at the forum would feed into a national policy advocacy to push the agenda for the implementation of Ghana’s agricultural policies to benefit farmers.

She appreciated government’s implementation of subsidies on fertilizer among others, and said it was beneficial to farmers, while it lasted, and added that the current situation of its total absence was a great dis-service to farmers.

Miss Aisha stressed that distribution of such support to farmers was lopsided in growth and coverage and where it was available needed to spread to cover a wider number of beneficiaries.

Mr Nickolas Apokera, Director, Trade Aid Integrated, lamented about the knowledge gap between farmers and stakeholders, and said though a lot was happening in terms of policy implementation; people in communities were unaware or had little information.

He hoped that the regional platform on agricultural policy would get policy holders to respond to the challenges raised.