ActionAid, Farmers Ask Govt to Spend More to Boost Food Production

Comments resulting from painstaking research conducted by ActionAid-Ghana reveals, that Ghana has achieved sustained economic growth in the past two decades but this has largely bypassed the three regions of the North – Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions, and inequality between South and North has widened. On the current growth path, the report says national poverty will fall from 28% to 16% by 2015, but in the North from 63% to 49%.

Thus by 2015 two-thirds of all poor Ghanaians will live in the North, highlighting the need for targeted interventions. Recognizing the interventions of the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority and the Northern Rural Growth Programme, the report says it is important to note that farmers in the three regions are overwhelmingly subsistence farmers and that staple-led growth will reduce poverty more than export-led growth.

The three regions according to the report account for 17% of Ghana’s population and 28% of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture’s 2011 budget – this it observes is a higher proportion of MoFA’s spending but still not sufficient to address the depth of poverty in the North. The various constraints of women farmers – notably on access to land and security of tenure, capital, water harvesting, extension services, improved seeds, livestock breeders, processing equipment and food storage – the report stressed should be addressed. “Most farming households in Northern Ghana still experience food insecurity for 3 to 7 months in any year”, it disclosed. 

In view of the aforementioned, ActionAid which works with the poor, excluded people and communities in Ghana to end poverty and injustice assembled smallholder farmers, mostly women drawn from the three regions of the North in Tamale for a three-day workshop between May 15^th and 17^th, 2012.

The workshop was to sensitise the participants on the NGO’s research findings on public financing of agriculture research, networking and agricultural policy advocacy. The research was based on extensive secondary research, interviews with government officials, donors, academics and NGOs, and fieldwork in Northern and Upper East Regions.

At the end of the workshop, participants issued a communiqué carrying several loaded grievances to government by highlighting previous interventions that failed to work in their interest and proposed new steps that should be considered for immediate implementation in order to ensure poverty eradication and food security particularly among residents of the North and the country at large.

The communiqué which was signed by Queronica Q. Quartey, Right to Food and Climate Change Policy Advisor of ActionAid-Ghana and Andrews Bukari, a representative of the participants, indicated that the farmers appreciate the fact that African States, through the Heads of State Summit in Maputo in 2003 committed themselves to allocate 10% of their national annual budget to support agriculture and ensure annual growth rates in the agricultural sector by 6% and as endorsed in the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).

It said it is also aware that government has put in place a food and agriculture sector policy phase two, FASDEP II (to target poor and risk prone producers) and its investment plan, the Medium Term Agricultural Sector Investment Plan (METASIP).

However, they (farmers) recognized that FASDEP I had constraints to its intended rural transformation and poverty reduction through modernization of poor smallholder agriculture because of improper targeting of the poor for development intervention and weak problem analysis. 

The communiqué further recognized that smallholder agriculture has been recognized in FASDEP II as playing significant roles in the food and agriculture sector and acknowledges women smallholder farmers as the main actors in production, processing and marketing, and that women are indeed the key actors in Ghanaian farming: constituting over half the agricultural labour force, producing 70% of the country’s food, constitute 95% of those involved in agro-processing and 85% of those in food distribution.

While noting that smallholder agriculture has not been given adequate attention in the METASIP and smallholder women farmers do not have a specific budget line, the farmers in the communiqué demanded that government increase its spending on agriculture, regarding the 10% allocation as a bare minimum for direct investment in food and agriculture.

Government, they noted, should relief the agriculture budget of the load of the feeder roads budget and distribute it on all sectors thereby making more resources available for direct funding for food and agriculture.

They stressed on the need for government to reorient the FASDEP II and METASIP to focus more on women farmers. “The extension service should be overhauled to support women farmers and agricultural research programmes should be reviewed to increase the productivity of crops grown by women and involve women in research”, the communiqué added.

The communiqué recommended that government subsidy programmes such as the fertilizer, tractors and block farming programmes should be allocated equally to men and women – 50:50. According to the research report, farmers said that the initial finance of between GH¢6,000 to GH¢12,000 required to access a tractor under the hire purchase scheme is unaffordable to most people and suggest that the deposit be reduced to between GH¢2,000 and GH¢5,000. Also, subsidizing simpler technologies is likely to be more beneficial for small farmers, the report suggested, adding that simple time and labour saving equipment like long-handled hoes or cassava processing mills, can reach many more farmers and communities whereas the application of a minimum fertilizer quota for women would ensure that subsidies are more available to them. 

It  also suggested that government develop a strategy to promote sustainable agriculture and reduce too much dependence on chemical  inputs, promoting low cost, high output and integrated farming systems –including models on agro-ecological approach, community seeds banks, use of indigenous knowledge, investment in small scale irrigation systems, livestock provision for women farmers and associated affordable credit.

It also called on the government to target resources more towards the three regions of the North especially to support increased productivity of staples through improved extension services, research, irrigation and credit facilities for smallholder farmers particularly women farmers.

The communiqué urged strongly on the need to lift the ban on employment in MoFA, especially the ban on recruitment of extension officers and to employ more female extension officers since in their estimation, they relate well with female farmers and vice versa. For instance, MoFA currently has only 3000 extension service officers across the country and most of them lack motorbikes to enable them reach communities, and salaries are low, making it very difficult to attract talented staff. The ratio of distribution of extension officers is 1:1500 farmers. 

This notwithstanding, Ghana has become an African success story when it comes to reducing hunger and poverty. It has already met Millennium Development Goal 1 of reducing the proportion of undernourished people from 27% in 1990 to 5% in 2007 – the lowest proportion of any sub-Saharan African state. Yet major challenges remain, especially for the country’s smallholder farmers, who achieve low productivity, are reliant on rain-fed farming and simple tools and have little access to extension services, finance and markets.