Give us land to farm -Northern Region women farmers appeal to traditional rulers

Women farmers in the Northern Region have appealed to traditional rulers and land owners to release lands to them for agricultural activities and for economic trees plantation.

According to the women, despite their zeal to increase food production and their low-income levels, the lack of access to farm lands has been a major challenge to them.

They lamented that some of the land owners who allocated small plots of land to them during the farming season often seized the lands after they had spent their resources to improve the fertility of such lands for cultivation.

The women, have therefore, called on the government to promote the adoption and promotion of policies that protected women’s rights to land and other productive resources.

They made the appeal during a tree planting exercise last Saturday at Dalogyili, a farming community in the Tamale Metropolis, as part of the Green Ghana Project.

The exercise, which was organised by the Ghana Federation of Forests and Farm Producers (GHaFFaP) in collaboration with SWIDA GH, a women-centred non-governmental organisation, saw the women farmers planting more than 1,000 trees.

Seedlings of economic tress such as mango, acacia and mahogany were distributed to the women to plant on their plots of land and backyards.

Access to lands

Madam Rahinatu Mohammed, a 45-year-old woman who spoke on behalf of the farmers, said they wanted to plant more economic trees as part of the Green Ghana project but they did not have enough land.

"The chiefs and the land owners don’t want to release lands to us to farm because it is a culture that women are not supposed to farm, the small backyards we farm are not enough for us.

“Even with the Green Ghana project, if we were having enough land, we would have planted a lot of mangoes and cashew" she said.

For her part, the Executive Director of SWIDA GH, Hajia Alimatu Sagito, said women in agriculture played important roles such as enhancing food production, income earners as well as nurturers and managers of natural resources but their efforts had constantly been thwarted by factors such as lack of access to land, capital and technology.

Hajia Alimatu, who is the women champion of GHaFFaP, said the tree planting exercise was part of efforts by the two bodies to support the government's Green Ghana Project.

She indicated that more than 3,000 economic tree seedlings had been distributed to some women farmers in the region for planting to help restore the vegetation cover as well as provide livelihoods for them.