Fertiliser subsidy programme targets smallholder farmers
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), needs to investigate and address the misnomer of how some large scale farmers and farms purchase subsidised fertilisers in larger quantities above the approved ration, a new report has recommended.
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Large scale farmers are said to be purchasing quantities over and above the prescribed bracket, thereby defeating the rationale behind the subsidy programme which is to increase the use of fertiliser application in the country, especially among smallholder farmers.
A Lecturer and Researcher at the Department of Agriculture of the University of Ghana, Dr John Jatoe, said the basic idea for introducing the rationing was to cushion farmers whose use of fertiliser would have been minimal or nil, in the absence of the Fertiliser Subsidy Programme (FSP).
“There is a reason for introducing the rationing so, in actual fact, it doesn’t help our course if we end up allocating fertilisers to people who could afford it anyway,” he said that during the presentation of a report on Ghana’s FSP in 2015 in Accra.
In 2008, the Government of Ghana introduced a Fertiliser Subsidy Programme (FSP) as a rapid intervention to help increase food production.
Findings
The Fertiliser Subsidy Monitoring Report on Ghana’s 2015 FSP was commissioned by the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG), with the support of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).
The report identified that among those who accessed the subsidised fertilisers, 82 per cent were male with 18 per cent being female farmers.
Dr Jatoe said the bulk of the subsidised fertiliser went to food crop farmers; 28 per cent to rice, 51 per cent to maize, five per cent to both rice and maize; five per cent to sorghum and 11 per cent to vegetables.
Farmers complained of limited retail outlets, which Dr Jatoe said increased transport cost for farmers who lived far away from the retailers.
Key recommendations
The report also recommended that MoFA needed a clearer strategy on how to target women under the programme.
“MoFA needs to be more specific on how the cotton farmers were supposed to access the fertiliser under the subsidy rather than just saying that we will give priority to women, we will extend the subsidy to cotton farmers for the purpose of trying to resuscitate or prop up the sector,” he said.
The Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan, lauded the PFAG report and welcomed such inputs from civil society and other independent bodies on the implementation of such programmes to help identify challenges that needed to be amended on such policy directives.
“MoFA works around the clock to service small scale farmers. So in all our policies and programmes, they are at the centre of everything we do. You notice that even the FSP is not ended but has various conditions that discriminate in favour of small scale farmers,” he said.
He added the principal objective of the ministry was for the country to be food secure, hence the need to target crops that contributed to food security.