The Ghana Federation of Forest and Farm Producers(GhaFFaP) has held its 4th National Dialogue Series in the Upper East Region focusing on smallholder farmers’ access to financial services, land, and inputs.
Under the theme “smallholder producers organizations access to finance, markets linkages, and social protection key to delivering sustainable climate resilience and green recovery” the dialogue explored ways of improving access to financial services, inputs, land, and market.
The founding partner for the dialogue and support for the Federation’s activities is sourced from the Forest and Farm Facility (FFF).
The Federation is a national federation of Forest and Farm Producer Organizations (FFPOs) drawn from three ecological zones of Ghana- the Savannah, Transition, and Forest Ecological zones aimed at maximizing their strength in numbers towards building strong and profitable forest and farm-based businesses, contributing to shaping national policies for sustainable development and promoting climate resilience landscapes.
With its agenda for 2030, the Federation’s theory of change is hinged on a series of carefully thought out approaches including the provision of appropriate support to undertake ‘green production’ which offers opportunities for livelihood diversification and climate-resilience, the provision of incubation services to provide relevant capacity to prioritize and identify a basket of products to be developed further.
As part of the dialogue, over 100 interest holders in the value chain including ministries, agencies and departments, private sector operators, financial institutions, Women groups, research institutions, and persons with disabilities were brought together to come up with strategies that will influence policy, strategy for young and old farmers and producers to ply their trade, confident of succeeding.
It also paid attention to innovating and leveraging technology to be more resilient against the impact of climate change.
Speaking to the media, the President of the Ghana Federation of Forest and Farm Producers (GhaFFaP), Alima Sagito Saeed, called for improved management of climate change-related issues, targeting vulnerable women as part of subsidy programs and the early implementation of subsidy programs.
She is concerned about access to land especially by women as she calls for intensified education on the Land Act to keep people informed to improve women’s access to land.
According to her, the One-village, one dam is an important policy that should be improved to enhance access to water.
“We know that there are lots of policies on climate that the government has put in place but sometimes the information doesn’t reach the actual farmers so we want to encourage the departments to be intentional about getting the information to the people. The other thing is about the input supply. With the subsidy program, they need to start early and identify the actual people who need it and support them.
The third issue has to do with access to land. Women are feeding this nation but government needs to get community leaders to understand that women will add value to life and should be given access to land,” she stated.
Yahaya Musah, Directorate of Crop Service, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, called for a shift from the conventional modes of farming.
He adds that farmers can diversify to maximize profits.
