Peasant farmers advocate agriculture financing
Madam Victoria Adongo, Programme Coordinator, Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG), has said access to agriculture financing constitutes critical factor in enhancing operations of small-scale farmers.
She said, however, small-scale often have limited or no access to credit to enable farmers undertake the required farming activities throughout the production, marketing and distribution stages of their operations.
Madam Adongo was speaking at the post policy dialogue meeting with Members of Parliament in Accra.
She expressed appreciation to successive parliaments and governments for recognising that there was ineffective agricultural financing in Ghana.
Madam Adongo however acknowledged attempts made to incorporate farmers access to financial service into national policies.
She said the Export Development and Agricultural Investment Fund and Microfinance and Small Loans Centre for example, in their present form and operations are not accessible to smallholder farmers and do not support farmers productivity and market access.
Madam Adongo said there are varied reasons accounting for the low access to financial service including high interest rate and perception of financial service providers about farming as being high risk.
She said the provision of credit is partly a private sector activity but there is the need for a strong role from government.
She said women make up significant proportion of small holder farmers but suffer from serious gender inequalities and often do not enjoy the same rights as men.
“Majority of women in agriculture have limited access to land and capital due to cultural and institutional factors, access to land is usually restricted to usufruct rights only,” she added.
She urged parliament to play proactive role in making sure that road networks under construction are continued and completed in food producing areas.
Madam Adongo called on government to improve and expand the buffer stock scheme to facilitate effective price determination.
She called for public-private partnership to promote investment in small-scale agriculture.
Mr Charles Nyaaba, Programme Officer PFAG, who presented a research finding on agriculture extension service to farmers, said access to the service is a serious threat to food security.
He said the research indicated that to achieve the target of reducing hunger and poverty, it requires more attention in extension, which would lead to improved performance on agriculture.
“It was also revealed that extension officers are poorly remunerated which reflects directly on their work and poverty levels amongst farmers,” he added.
Dr Alhassan Ahmed Yakubu, Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture in charge of Crop said government has ordered for the renovation of all agriculture colleges to engage and train more extension officers.
He said government acknowledges the importance of agriculture financing and called on farmers to mobilise themselves into farmer base organisation groups to be able to access loans.
Dr Yakubu, who is also the Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Agriculture, assured the farmers of parliament’s commitment to push for a policy on agriculture extension services to increase yield.
Source: GNA