The Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG) has expressed disappointment in government for not giving the agriculture sector the needed attention in the recent mid-year budget review.
“Now that the mid-year budget has been presented, we believe our members and smallholder farmers were not given the necessary attention because nothing about access to subsidised agricultural inputs was mentioned and it is one of the most important things to us.”
National president of PFAG, Mr Wepia Addo Awal Adugwada raised the concerns at a workshop organised by PFAG in collaboration with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA).
He indicated that the government’s plans of introducing an enhanced version of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative must be expedited so that farmers could have access to inputs on credit as the farming season begins.
“Since the planting system has already started in most places, we were expecting the Minister for Finance, Mr Ken Ofori Atta to mention the completion of the enhanced PFJ proposal, however we got disappointed when he said the proposal was yet in its final stages and that government was yet to finalise it.”
“We were hoping by now it has received the approval so that once it is out, small holder farmers can have access to credit inputs to increase food production because if they do not have access to such funding what happens is that the sizes of their farms normally reduces,” he added.
The government, he said should have treated the matter as an emergency, adding that this was very crucial to boost food security in the country.
Mr Adugwada, therefore, called on the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Bryan Acheampong to critically look into the issue and address the cause of the delay in finalising the enhanced PFJ proposal, and make sure there was budgetary allocation so that farmers could have access to the inputs on time.
Touching on the government’s One District One Factory (1D1F) initiative, he said when it was announced farmers were happy about it, however after the dams were constructed “we realise the dams were not fit for purpose.”
This, he said could be blamed on the lack of stakeholder engagement prior to the beginning of the project, adding that most of the dams ran completely dry during the dry season, defeating the purpose for which they were constructed.
On his part, Executive Director of PFAG, Dr Charles Nyaaba, called on all stakeholders in the agriculture sector, including traditional authorities who mostly release lands for farming, to contribute their quota towards supporting activities of smallholder farmers.
He mentioned that the PFJ initiative had created a huge burden on the government and urged the private sector to also come on board to support the government to deliver on its mandate
BY RAISSA SAMBOU
