Northern farmers lack finance, infrastructure – Group
A farmers’ group has said lack of affordable financing and infrastructure remains the major challenge facing small holder farmers in the Northern Region.
The group at Banggiyili community in the Sanarugu District said through the intervention of the Alliance for Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA) projects, they were up to date with best farming practices but what was preventing them from adopting those practices was lack of access to affordable finance.
Mr Alhassan Seidu, Secretary of the group, said through farm demonstrations by the Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) farmers had learnt that it was more profitable to take keen interest in managing the soil and give it the correct dosage of fertilizer.
“We have seen all these best practical methods but our challenge is that we don’t have resources to practice it on our farm. Aside that after one strives to crop, it becomes also difficult to transport the food stuff to marketing centre”, he said
The farmers said this when Dr Bashir Jama West Africa Director of AGRA led a team to visit some AGRA projects, which included the Agriculture Value Chain Mentorship Project and the ISFM in the region.
The ISFM project is being implemented by the Savanna Agriculture Research Institute and it seeks to improve the fertility of soil health through the use of mineral, organic and other forms of fertilizers.
Mr Seidu said the value chain initiative had also linked farmers to tractor service, buyers, agro dealers and others but were not able to expand their farms due to lack of resource constraints.
Dr Jama advised the farmers not to be discouraged but should approach financial institutions as a group and access loans to expand their farms.
He said, “Models of AGRA project gives me hope that with more collaboration with other institutions we can scale up such initiatives to educate more farmers to boost food production. Now, what is left is the resource to do that.”
Dr Jama commended government for initiating programmes towards ensuring food security and called for more partnership with other agencies towards increasing food production.
Source: GNA