Rural Women’s Day marked at Asuboi
The United Nations’ (UN) International Day of Rural Women is annually celebrated on October 15 to recognise rural women’s role in supporting their communities.
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The idea of honouring rural women with a special day was put forward at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, in 1995. It was suggested that October 15 be celebrated as “World Rural Women’s Day,” which is the eve of World Food Day, to highlight rural women’s role in food production and food security.
International Day of Rural Women was previously celebrated across the world for more than a decade before it was officially made an event of the UN, after which the first International Day of Rural Women was observed on October 15, 2008. The day recognises the role of rural women, including indigenous women in enhancing agriculture and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty.
In Ghana, the Development Action Association (DAA) and Farmers Organisation Network in Ghana (FONG) on Wednesday marked the World Rural Women’s Day at Asuboi in the Ayesuano District of the Eastern Region.
The event which was on the theme; “The Role of Rural Women Farmers in Food Security” brought together representatives of rural women organisations and women farmers among others from the Greater Accra, Eastern, Western, Ashanti , and Volta regions.
In Ghana, about 50 per cent of rural women are farmers and producers undertaking diverse activities in agricultural production to ensure food security.
However, targets for improvement of the agricultural industry over the years have failed to take the reality of the rural women’s contribution to the agricultural sector into consideration.
Hence, women receive only one per cent of agricultural credit, own only two per cent of agricultural land, and receive only five per cent of credit extension services.
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Need for support
In her address, the National Women’s Leader of the Farmers Organisation Network in Ghana (FONG), Mrs Lydia Sasu, said currently, access to fertiliser which was supposed to be supplied to rural women farmers through agro-chemical companies had become a huge challenge.
To this effect, she said, majority of the women farmers planted their crops without the use of fertilisers due to its high cost and limited availability and as such, the situation had led to the low yield of crops this year.
She, therefore, called on the government to make fertiliser readily available to the rural women farmers to facilitate crop production.
Mrs Sasu, who is also the leader of the Development Action Association (DAA), called for a strong partnership with the private sector in order to have better options of financial resources such as loans to undertake agricultural activities.
“The government needs to put in place a conducive environment that would encourage private sector investment in the agricultural sector. This is the key to ensuring food security given that the government cannot undertake all activities,” she said.
Experiences
Sharing her experience as a rural woman farmer, Madam Rebecca Eshun, a fish processor, said even though rural women were hardly recognised in their efforts to contribute to the growth in the agricultural sector, they provided labour in weeding, harvesting and carrying of the final product to the marketing centres for sale.
Through such activities, she said, some of the women were able to support their families and also put their children through school and added, “We may be insignificant but our efforts can’t also go unrecognised”.
For Madam Nana Teiko, a vegetable farmer, the income she generated as a rural woman farmer had enabled her to support her family and herself. She had also been able to claim some farm lands through the courts for farming.
She, therefore, advocated the need for women to be given lands to farm as they formed part of the main driving force behind agricultural production in the country.
About 25 other rural women groups who attended the celebration voiced out their grievances through a drama display that mostly highlighted the need for the supply of farm tools and fertiliser to them to enhance their work.
Rural women in agric
In his address, the Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) in charge of Crops, Dr Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan , said despite the challenges rural women faced in accessing productive resources such as land, credit, farm inputs, technology and agro-processing equipment, they were significant in the achievement of the nation’s food security.
He said the incidence of illiteracy, low self-esteem, heavy workloads, time constraints, among others, negatively impacted women’s role in achieving food security. He also mentioned poor infrastructural facilities and discrimination against women, in addition to lack of social services such as health centres, day care centres, schools, electricity and water.
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Ministry’s interventions
Dr Alhassan said the ministry, as part of its interventions to empower rural women to achieve food security, had established the Women in Agriculture Development Directorate (WIAD) to address the specific needs of women in the agricultural sector.
He said the main responsibility of WIAD was to develop and implement policies that were beneficial to women farmers, processors and entrepreneurs in rural, sub-urban and urban communities, through effective transfer of appropriate technologies.
He said some women recently benefited from the livestock project of the ministry which provided them with sheep, goats, pigs, etc.
For the poultry project, he said rural women were more than 30 per cent of the beneficiaries and added that it gave them an alternative source of livelihood.
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