Women in the Oti Region have been asked to venture into tree crop farming (TCF) to prepare them financially for the future.
The Krachi- West Municipal Director of Food and Agriculture (MDFA), Mr Atta Adusei, made the called on Women Farmer Based Organisations (FBOs) at the weekend during a meeting at Bommoden, a suburb of the Krachi-West Municipality.
He said there were two identifiable women FBOs in the Municipality, namely Anokroye and Techutop women farmer organisations and they were into rice, groundnut and vegetable cultivations, which needed to be sustained and expanded through modern farming practices.
Mr Adusei explained that the current farming activities of the women could be described as a short term economic activities, therefore, there was the need for them to undertake tree crop cultivation as a long term business.
He observed that the current farming activities engaged in by the women FBOs needed an irrigation system to ensure all- year- farming rather than depending on the unreliable weather system, since the farms were close to the two water bodies, the Volta Lake and the Oti River.
Mr Adusei said the women needed simple pumping machines with over-head tanks for them to engage in an all year commercial farming activities that would enable them to generate regular income and reduce poverty among women in the rural areas.
According to him, the women had no problem with marketing their produce because there were high demands for groundnut, rice and vegetables in major markets in the Oti region, such as the Dambai, Kete-Krachi and the Burae markets.
Mr Adusei announced that in the Krachi-West Municipality, cashew and mango were identified as the best tree crops in the area, and the Tree Crop Development Authority (TCDA) would provide his outfit with 20,000 cashew seedlings to be distributed freely to interested farmers in the area.
The Vice Chairperson of the Krachi-West Municipal Women FBOs, Mrs Agnes Nado, appealed to the government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to support them with farm implements to expand their farms because the use of hoe and cutlass did not help them over the years.
Mrs Nado also drew the government’s attention to the need to provide them with tractor services, saying the FBOs had twenty-eight hectares of farmland but were able to cultivate only eight hectares because they depended on the traditional methods of using the hoe and the cutlass, instead of engaging tractor services to expand their farms.
FROM SAMUEL AGBEWODE, BOMMODEN
