By Dennis Peprah
Fosukrom, (WNR), April 5, GNA – Women farmers at Fosukrom in the Bia East District of the Western North Region have appealed for processing, storage and irrigation facilities.
With the facilities, the women said they would be able to engage in commercial production of maize, rice and cassava for increased food productivity.
Madam Mavis Odoi, the Secretary of the Fosukrom Women Farmers Association (FWFA), made the appeal through the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the sidelines of a day’s training on the adoption and application of indigenous technology.
With support from the Global Greengrants Fund (GGF), the Association organised the training for more than 150 women farmers in the area, which also exposed the participants to climate change impact, contributory factors as well as the nation’s adaptation and mitigation actions.
The women were taken through the use of leaves for the preparation of organic manure, and the proper application of the compost.
Madam Odoi said the area had a population of around 1,758, with women and girls being the majority, and predominantly peasant farmers, with few of them engaged in large-scale farming.
They grow plantain, cocoyam, maize, yam, cassava, cocoa, and oil palm with a few others engaged in vegetable production.
She explained that the women were mainly in the farming business because they depended largely on it as their source of livelihood due to the lack of formal education.
“In fact, they cannot secure white colour jobs and so farming has become their main alternative, ” Madam Odoi stated, worrying that because of a lack of processing, storage and irrigation facilities those engaged in the cultivation of cereals and vegetables could not produce in large or commercial quantities.
Recently, she said the area had been experiencing frequent droughts and disease outbreaks, resulting in low crops yields, and thereby leading to hunger and high poverty, particularly among the women farmers.
This continues to increase their socially marginalized situation and they are compelled to use synthetic agrochemicals in controlling pests and diseases which affect their health, destroy soil quality, enhance climate change impacts and poison biodiversity through run-off water.
Madam Odoi commended the GGF for funding the Association to implement a project to help sustain the women in their farming activities.
The project seeks to mobilize women farmers in the area and train them on how to prepare organic (indigenous) herbicides and pesticides for their farming, which has no impact on the environment or influence climate change or land fertility, is cheaper and has the ability to improve productivity.
It further creates awareness of climate change, she stated and urged the farmers to endeavour to back and share and apply the knowledge acquired to bring positive change in their communities.
GNA