AGRA supports agric projects in Northern Region
The Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an international farmer-support organisation, has invested $6 million in the agricultural sector of the Northern Region since its inception in Ghana.
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Farmer-based organisations, especially those in the northern part of the country, have benefited from capacity building programmes developed to boost farm productivity for low-income farmers while safeguarding the environment at the same time.
The President of the AGRA, Ms Jane Karuku, was speaking in Accra yesterday when she called on the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Mr Clement Kofi Humado, as part of a five-day working visit to Ghana.
The visit forms part of her participation in the Sixth Africa Agricultural Science Week activities organised by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).
While in the country, she would also visit some AGRA project sites in the Northern Region.
Ms Karuku explained that the AGRA worked alongside governments to support small-holder farmers and women’s farmer groups and that the organisation had a funding mechanism through which those groups could access credit.
The AGRA, she further explained, had engaged students in tertiary institutions, including the University of Ghana, Legon, in capacity building programmes through which the beneficiaries, numbering about 800 from the ecological zones, were awarded certificates.
Grains and cereal production has also been identified by the AGRA president as one of its major support areas for the country, for which reason she said maize and groundnuts had received enormous support in the form of 350 varieties.
The AGRA is a dynamic partnership working across the African continent to help millions of small-scale farmers and their families to lift themselves out of poverty and hunger.
Its programmes develop practical solutions to boost farm productivity and incomes significantly for the poor while safeguarding the environment.
Ms Karuku identified policy problems in Africa as the bane of agricultural development but lauded Ghana for making progress in terms of introducing laws and policies that advanced the growth of the agricultural sector.
Mr Humado, for his part, lauded the AGRA for its support, stressing that the organisation was helping to develop Ghana’s seed industry, which he described as weak.
The AGRA, he added, was also helping to enrich farm soils to guarantee good yield for farmers.
By Sebastian Syme & Sarah Mensah/Daily Graphic/Ghana