About 3,000 Farmers Get Support In Gushegu

World Vision is investing in about 3,000 smallholder farmers in three communities in the Gusheigu District of the Northern Region.

This is to boost the organization’s dry season gardening initiative under the Food Security and Resilience project.

The initiative is to directly engage some selected farmers in the Bulung, Watungu and Kpatinga communities.

According to the Food Security and Resilience Project Officer, Pastor Joseph Alhassan, the intervention seeks to increase the income levels of the would-be beneficiaries whose economic mainstay is peasant farming.

“Whereas about 92 percent of the district's total population is economically active, 18.2 percent are not. About 88 percent of the population in the district is engaged in agriculture as their main source of survival.”

Pastor Alhassan mentioned deforestation, bush burning, charcoal production and inappropriate farming practices as challenges affecting agriculture in the area.

The Gusheigu cluster Officer in charge of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Nicholas Ackah Baidoo, told Citi News that, “The dry season vegetable gardening is a means to provide nutritional sources of food for the beneficiary farmers and their families as well as other community members.”

He anticipated that the initiative would improve the farmers’ income saying, “The initiative will serve as a source of income for the farmers during the dry season when most of them often do not have any work to do to earn income.”

The overall goal of the Food Security and Resilience project is to ensure that all children especially the most vulnerable and their families, are secured in terms of food.

The project also intends to increase food crops production and livestock among beneficiaries, increase their resilience to economic shocks and increase economic opportunities for women and young people.

The Gusheigu Municipality has less economic opportunities and the majority of the people there are farmers.