National Farmer Database project stalls due to lack of funds
The National Farmer Database project which was being developed by the Agricultural Extension Services Division of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to capture data of Ghanaian farmers has stalled because of lack of funds.
Advertisement
The project has so far captured the data of 80,000 farmers.
A source at the Agricultural Extension Services of the ministry told the Daily Graphic that the programme had, for some time now, been bedevilled with cash flow problems.
About two years ago, the project captured about 80,000 farmers from all parts of the country onto the system but no additional data has been captured since then.
The source said it would be in the interest of farmers for the database development to be completed to serve as a basis to identify the needs of all category of farmers under the ministry to easily provide incentives for them.
Database
The National Farmer Database project, which started around 2011, was developed with the support of the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and other philanthropic organisations.
The project is expected to contribute to informed policy development and improve planning, decision-making and service delivery in the agricultural sector.
It is also to ensure an increase in food production for both local consumption and for export.
Other Trending Stories
Agricultural Extension Services directors in the districts are responsible for collating information on all categories of farmers in their respective districts for onward computation at the national level in Accra.
The source noted that if immediate steps were not taken to seek funding for the continuation of the project, all the gains that had been made so far would be eroded.
Africa
Nigeria and South Africa are two of the countries in Africa that have successfully developed databases for their farmers.
The Nigerian government, as part of efforts to ensure the even distribution of incentives to farmers, in 2011 rolled out a plan to collect and collate a farmers’ database in that country.
The Permanent Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Ezekiel Oyemomi, was quoted as saying that with full knowledge of the number of farmers, as well as the size of their farms, it would be easy for the government to evenly distribute incentives to farmers accordingly.
In South Africa, the KwaZulu-Natal Province was the first to establish an accurate register of all its agricultural producers.