By Emmanuel Gamson, GNA
Takoradi, Dec. 01, GNA – The Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG) has called on the appropriate authorities to take decisive action against illegal sand winning activities on farmlands, particularly for smallholder farmers.
It said just like galamsey, sand winning activities were causing a devastating impact on fertile lands which negatively affected farming activities and robbed peasant farmers of their livelihoods.
Mr Wepia Addo Awal, the President of the PFAG, made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), in Takoradi.
He said: “As smallholder farmers, sand winning is devastating some of our farmlands because anytime such activities take place on the lands, the top soil which contains much of the nutrients is totally destroyed leaving the lands to become unproductive.”
He explained that this translated into low crop production which affected the livelihoods of farmers and subsequently threatened the country’s food security in the long run.
Mr Awal stated that the Association had taken note of the increase in sand winning activities, and that institutions like the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, district assemblies, and other relevant stakeholders in the agricultural value chain must act swiftly to fight the menace.
“We expect the authorities to take this as a matter of urgency, so that areas that have been demarcated for agricultural farmlands should be exempted when it comes to sand winning,” he said.
On what the Association was doing to help protect its members from such activities, the PFAG President stated that they would empower their members to report cases of sand winning activities on their farmlands to the appropriate authorities for intervention.
He said if this canker was not nipped in the bud and allowed to escalate like the galamsey menace, which had already devastated farmlands, then it was seriously going to affect food production and threaten Ghana’s food security.
GNA
Edited by Justina Paaga/ Christabel Addo