By Anthony Adongo Apubeo
Bolgatanga, June 02, GNA – Projects implemented under the Ghana Agriculture Sector Investment Programme (GASIP) in Northern Ghana have been handed over to beneficiary and implementing stakeholders with a call on them to sustain the projects, increase productivity, and ensure food security.
The projects, together with a comprehensive sustainability plan had been given to stakeholders in the agriculture value chain, the Departments of Agriculture and Farmer Based Organisations among others from the Savannah, North East, Upper East and Upper West Regions.
GASIP is one of the government’s interventions implemented by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in 81 districts across the country with the objective of sustainably reducing rural poverty through increased profitability and climate change resilience of agribusinesses and smallholder farmers.
The project which begun in 2015 with funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was designed to leverage on the private sector resources and expertise in making the smallholder farmers competitive by increasing their efficiency and resilience to climate change vulnerability.
The implementation had been anchored on capacity building, provision of rural infrastructure, training in food quality and nutrition, creation of various market linkages and gender transformation, including equal participation of women and youth.
Speaking at the handing over workshop at Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region, Mr Klutse Kudomor, the National Programme Coordinator of GASIP, noted that the life cycle of the programme had come to an end, however, lots of successes had been achieved which needed to be sustained for improved agriculture security.
Touching on the achievements of the programme, Mr Kudomor noted that 800 Farmer Based Organisations had been trained in institutional and organizational development while 44,000 smallholder farmers had also received training in good agricultural practices and climate smart technologies.
He said, “80 Value Chain Cluster businesses were developed and supported, and the programme outreach also covered 160,000 smallholder farmers, out of which 36 per cent are women while 24,000 smallholder farmers have been connected to the Ghana Commodity Exchange”.
He added that 12 Automatic Weather Stations were provided to farming communities for accurate weather information, 3,000 smallholder farmers were receiving daily weather information via SMS and 76 kilometres of feeder roads constructed while farm tracks were constructed at 17 locations.
“A total of 303.5 hectares of water harvesting contour bunds have been constructed for rice production, 22 km of access roads constructed within the rice valleys, 35 Gender Action Learning System (GALS) champions have been sensitised in methodologies for gender transformation,” he said
Additionally, 5,592 mothers were trained in nutrition, 7,550 women including 600 young people were trained in specialised income generation agro-processing and marketing and 268 Community Saving & Loans Associations (CSLA) were formed.
He said a solid foundation had been laid through the strengthening of resilience of smallholder farmers and noted that efforts must be made to sustain the gains to increase the growth of the agriculture sector and the economy.
Mr Mohammed Hardi Tufeiru, the Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, acknowledged the contributions of various stakeholders in the successful implementation of the programme and expressed hope that future projects would build on the experiences and lessons of GASIP to strengthen resilience of smallholder farmers.
“These lessons reaffirm the fact that with comprehensive demand-oriented interventions, the smallholder farmer can produce adequate staple food for local consumption and even for export,” he said.
In a speech read on his behalf, Mr Emmanuel Fordjour, the Head of African Development Bank/IFAD Unit at the Ministry of Finance, noted that the project had supported vulnerable farmers with cash amount of US$1.85 million and 27 solar-powered boreholes had also been constructed.
GNA