The day’s forum, on the Project theme, “Mainstreaming Inputs of Youth and Women Farmers into SADA Medium Term Development Plan (MTDP)”, was organized by the Coalition of SADA Zone Civil Society Organizations and led by Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA) with support from the USAID-Agricultural Policy Support Programme (APSP).
The groups in a statement issued after the programme , observed that during rainy season , hunger and food insecurity is usually reduced in communities in the SADA Zone, and therefore proposed to SADA to facilitate to ensure that the government , as a matter of urgency, introduce what they termed as “One Community, One-Dam Policy” , as part of policy measures to ensure all year farming to help promote agriculture and food security in Ghana.
The youth and women farmers, who urged government to make substantial investment in agriculture, also called on government to reduce high interest rates on loans for agricultural purposes and employ more agric extension officers to help farmers to adopt improved farming methods and technologies to increase productivity so as to help reduce extreme poverty in the Northern Savannah areas.
The Project Coordinator of SADA CSOs , Mr. Bismark Adongo Ayorogo , stated that Ghana in 2015 , missed its agricultural sector growth target of 3.6 per cent because the country did not invested the needed investment in the sector to generate the desired level of growth.
He noted that although, Ghana since 2003, committed to the” Maputo Declaration” to spend not less than 10 per cent of its annual budgets on agriculture, it was yet to achieve that target .
Mr. Adongo commended the new leadership of SADA for prioritizing agriculture in the bigger transformational agenda of the northern savannah ecological zone.
By Samuel Adadi Akapule, Tamale (N/R)
