Agric ministry launches new strategy to ensure growth, gender parity
A revised national gender and agriculture development strategy to address the current agricultural challenges and ensure gender equity in the sector has been launched in Accra.
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Dubbed the “Gender and Agriculture Development Strategy II”, the policy is a revision of the already existing strategy which was crafted in 2001 to address gender-related concerns in the agriculture sector.
Initiated by Women in Agriculture Development of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) and supported by development partners, the policy is intended to enhance equity in agriculture service delivery and access to inputs.
Women in agric
A Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture in charge of Livestock, Dr Hannah Bissiw, who launched the report, explained that despite the efforts to reach out to women in the sector, there was a decreasing trend in numbers of women in agriculture activities.
She said the 2014 Agriculture Sector Annual Report of the MoFA indicated that since 2012, the number of women in agricultural activities had reduced from 9,298 in 2012 and 8,339 in 2013 to 6,478 in 2014.
However, she said, women continued to be the driving force behind the sector in the country, with about 90 per cent of them engaged in farming activities for their livelihood.
“With all the significant contributions of women in agricultural development in the country, they have less access to land and agricultural loans than their counterparts,” she stated.
Objectives
Dr Bissiw said the policy would strengthen institutional capacity for gender responsive policies, projects and monitoring, as well as address challenges such as climate change and declining soil fertility.
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She said the policy further addressed issues such as access to land and information on land rights and tenure security.
In a solidarity message, a representative of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Feed the Future project, Ms Hannah Nyamekye, said some women in the sector would be trained on the strategy to serve as resource persons.
She said about 160 women would be engaged in the training exercise after which they would be given grants to embark on sensitisation programmes to ensure the successful implementation of the policy.