Support women in agriculture
The annual World Rural Women‘s Day (WRWD) has been marked in Asuboi in the Ayesuano District in the Eastern Region with a call on the government to make fertilizer readily available to rural women farmers to facilitate crop production.
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The National Women’s Leader of the Farmers Organisation Network in Ghana (FONG), Mrs Lydia Sasu, said currently access to fertilizer which was supposed to be supplied to them through agrochemical companies had become a huge challenge.
She said as a result majority of the women planted their crops without fertilizers which led to the low yield of crops this year.
Mrs Sasu called for a strong partnership with the private sector in order to have financial resources by way of loans to undertake agricultural activities.
“The government needs to put in place 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.
This year’s celebration was on the theme “The Role of Rural Women Farmers in Food Security”.
The WRWD was initiated in 1995 at the United Nations Conference for Women in Beijing to honour rural women who make up a quarter of the world’s population and contribute about 80 per cent, in Africa, and 60 per cent in Asia to global food production.
However, targets for improvement of the agricultural sector over the years have failed to take the reality of the rural woman’s contribution to the agricultural sector into consideration.
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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.
We need support
Sharing her experiences, Madam Rebecca Eshun, a fish processor, said even though rural women were hardly recognised in the agricultural sector, they contributed a great deal of their labour to support the 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.
“We may be insignificant but our efforts can’t also go unrecognised”, she said.
In his address, the Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) in charge of Crops, Dr Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan , said 41 per cent of rural women were in the agricultural sector and produced 70 per cent of the nation’s food crops while men produced the cash crops.
Dr Alhassan said to support the rural women, the ministry had established the Women in Agriculture Development Directorate (WIAD) to address the specific needs of women in the agric sector.