Beneficiaries hail USAID ‘F2F’ programme in Ghana

Beneficiaries of the USAID Farmer to Farmer (F2F) programme in Ghana have hailed the initiative, saying it has had a tremendous impact on lives reassuring most poor farmers that they could make it with the application of right information.

They say the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programme has empowered and increased productivity and income of individual farmers and organisations in host communities through its provision of technical assistance at the grassroots.

“F2F has been helping us farmers a lot and it will continue to grow to help others. This particular relationship of encouraging others is very good and we will like it to continue to help many farmers,” Alima Seidu, a beneficiary at the northern part of Ghana told agric stakeholders on Thursday at a day’s event to highlight the project achievements in Accra.

Prior to the arrival of the F2F project, she said, the main challenge of small scale farmers’ was the lack of skills and resources to practice their farming activities well and profitably.

“But the volunteers of the F2F helped us so well to deal with the challenges,” she added.

The USAID’s programme implementers – ACDI/VOCA rely on highly qualified volunteers to support agricultural development with an emphasis on improving production, and post-harvest activities such as processing, marketing and credit ad input supply.

The volunteers in their training for the farmers also work to improve agribusiness management, environmental conservation and policy and regulatory regimes.

Alhaji Mallam Husein, a teacher at Gushegu-Salaga also in the Northern Region, said he started farming on a small scale supporting parent farmers in just two communities but with the support from the F2F volunteers, he had expanded to two districts serving ten communities – 25 farmers from each district.

“This event gives us an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of the Ghanaian farmers, farmer organisations, agricultural business and public institutions that have worked with the F2F volunteers over the last five years,” Catherine Alston , F2F West African Programme Manager, said at the event.

Since the programme inception in 2008 in Ghana, the ACDI/VOCA team has fielded 139 volunteers to work with more than 115 host organisations throughout the ten regions of the country.

This year ACDI/VOCA is celebrating 50 years of empowering people. It has fostered broad-based economic growth, raised living standards and created vibrant communities in 146 countries.

ACDI/VOCA is a private, international development nonprofit organization based in US.

Source: GNA