Peasant farmers want all-year fertiliser supply
The Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG) has appealed to the government to extend the Fertiliser Subsidy Programme (FSP) to the dry season to cater for farmers on irrigation projects.
Advertisement
The PFAG, which advocates poverty eradication among smallholder farmers through measures that improve and protect their livelihoods, said since the FSP was aimed at cushioning farmers to increase their fertiliser application to lead to increased food production, it was important that it covered all crop farmers all year round.
Earlier this year, government hinted of plans to rehabilitate existing irrigation facilities, develop many other small dams at the community level and also seek external funding.
The President of PFAG, Mr Abdul-Rahman Mohammed, at a policy dialogue on the FSP in Accra recently said peasant farmers played an important role in the economic development of the country as they produced about 90 per cent of food and meat consumed in the country.
“We provide the raw materials for industry and for export yet our efforts are not rewarded by society. We, therefore, received the FSP while hoping that this good gesture would be extended to other programmes for the benefit of farmers and the sector as a whole,” he said.
PFAG, he said, recognised that input subsidy was not a short-term quick-fix, but a sustained input subsidy was necessary for any major success if Ghana was to achieve the stated objectives of the fertiliser and seed subsidy programme.
The PFAG also reiterated its commitment to engage with government and other stakeholders to increase the benefits and considerable gains made with calls for the introduction of input subsidy policy by parliaments with clear sources of funding and sustainability strategy.
Irrigation programmes
The Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture (MOFA), Dr Alhassan Ahmed Yakubu, in interview with the GRAPHIC BUSINESS said the overall approach was to advocate more investment in irrigation infrastructure to supplement rain-fed agriculture that was being relied on as of now.
Other Trending Stories
“Basically, the idea is to try to grow the irrigation dimension of our agriculture to try to catch up with the rain-fed dimension because when your irrigated agriculture advances, your environmental protection is also effective because you commit less land and higher productivity,” he said.
Dr Yakubu said a lot of investments were being put into irrigation infrastructure development through public investment and partnership with the private sector.
Agriculture experts say that plants often make better use of fertiliser if they have enough water.
He said “It’s enough to make a commitment to subsidise fertiliser but the money must be found to pay for it. It is our money as a country that is used to pay because most of the time, donor money does not go into fertiliser subsidy so if there are challenges with the national budget then it will be affected,”
He added that the programme enjoyed a lot of fast tracking on terms of procurement and that some of the hitches associated with it were not deliberate.