Rukia Yacoub delivering an address
The World Food Programme (WFP) has admonished smallholder farmers in Ghana to pool their resources together so as to improve the quality of their expertise to increase demand for their services.
Speaking at a session on Custom and Contract Farming during the 8th Pre-harvest Agribusiness Exhibition and Conference held in Tamale from recently, the Sustainable Food Coordinator of World Food Programme, Nanga Kaye, urged smallholder farmers to come together so as to get stronger and create more job opportunities for themselves.
As customs and contract farmers, he said, they could also offer various farming related services to farmers and marketers at a fee with zero to little start-up capital to a point where major technologies could be adopted.
Services offered by Customs and Contract farmers include weeding, harvesting, transportation of produce to the market and sales.
Mr. Kaye indicated that services of custom farmers were critical in reducing post-harvest losses, adding that if those offering such services delivered timely and effectively, there would be a scramble for their services.
The WFP also led two other sessions at the event.
These included Sustainable Food System, which focused on food safety, proper warehousing and food storage methods and the Commodity session which focused on soybean, rice and maize.
Country Director of the WFP, Rukia Yacoub expressed the programme’s delight in using a platform of this nature to support smallholder farmers who produce the majority of the food consumed yet remain among the most food-insecure livelihood groups in Ghana.
She enumerated the programme’s plans and hoped that ultimately it would help agro-processors in Ghana produce for the West Africa sub-region and other markets.
According to her, that would mean more markets for smallholder farmers’ produce, more income and better opportunity for them to extricate themselves from food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty.
The WFP partnered Agrihouse Foundation, a non-governmental organization to organize the Pre-harvest Agribusiness Exhibition and Conference, which connects smallholder farmers to markets, assisting farmers and agri-businesses to expand their businesses.