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Access To Land And Farm Inputs Still Remain Barriers To Rural Smallholder Women Farmers In Ghana—Agrisolve

By Edward A. Ken-Zorre || DiamondfmOnline.com
Agriculture Access To Land And Farm Inputs Still Remain Barriers To Rural Smallholder Women Farmers In Ghana—Agrisolve
OCT 18, 2020 LISTEN

The Executive director for Agrisolve Ghana, Elorm Goh has identified lack of access to land, farm inputs, technical training, and market access as barriers to the progress of rural smallholder women farmers in the country.

She indicated that over 50% of farmers are women yet are marginalized by these barriers and has therefore called on the Government and other stakeholders to intervene and also address the issues of finance, technology to enable agriculture to thrive.

Speaking at an event to mark this year's International Day for Rural Women in Zinnido, a farming community in the Gushegu Municipality, Ms. Goh called on the government to partner traditional leaders to fashion out favorable land acquisition guidelines to enable women to have access to lands for agricultural purposes.

She added that “the woman smallholder farmer is the tool to changing the narrative of Agriculture and giving her the much-needed access to land, input, technical training and markets would break the barriers”.

Executive Director of Songtaba women group, Lamnatu Adam in an address said agriculture contributes about 38% to the Ghanaian economy and women contribute about 50% to 60% of the labor force within the agriculture sector yet women are challenged with several factors that deny them the opportunity to improve their livelihoods.

She called on the government and other stakeholders to strengthen women's access to productive resources including land, modernized farm inputs, and financing.

“We also want the government to look at how we can have strategies on adaptive climate change initiatives and also gender-responsive budgeting to ensure women in agriculture benefit from all sources of revenue".

The International Day for Rural Women is marked annually to celebrate women and girls who play a key role in rural areas enhancing agricultural development, building climate resilience, facing malnutrition, and food insecurity.

In the last two years, Agrisolve has assisted 168 women within the Gushegu Municipality financing, farm inputs, and series of training to enable them to improve their farm yields.

The NGO celebrated this year's International Day for Rural Women on the theme “Her input for Prospect”

As part of the event, a breast concern education and a free breast cancer screening was organized for women of the Zinnido community.

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