World Vision has organized the second Pre-Season Agriculture Market Linkage Fair at Paga in the Kassena-Nankana West in the Upper East Region. The fair attracted individual farmers, farmer groups, financial institutions and agricultural inputs and machinery dealers, among others.
The Agriculture Market Linkage Fair is in line with the European Union sponsored Landscapes and Environmental Agility across the Nation Project (EU-LEAN), being implemented in the district by World Vision.
The Agriculture Market Linkage Fair is meant to help promote inclusive and efficient food systems that better integrate smallholder farmers and small and medium agribusinesses into the value chains.
The District Director of Agriculture, Mohammed Bukari, believes the fair has awaken many farmers to start preparing towards the upcoming farming season and encouraged participants who will be farming for the first time to seek advice as quickly as possible, before they start investing.
He said: “Many of our agriculture programmes focus on production, and therefore, we end up training farmers to produce more food, and then, selling becomes a problem. I am happy that World Vision has decided to focus this agriculture fair on linking farmers to produce aggregators, inputs dealers and financial institutions. This type of fair is one sure way of making farming easier and fulfilling.”
Project Manager for the EU-LEAN project, Joseph Edwin Yelkabong, who represented the Acting Regional Operations Manager of World Vision, commended community leaders, the District Assembly and other departments for embracing the Landscapes and Environmental Agility across the Nation project in the district.
According to him, the partnership between these stakeholders and World Vision has positioned the Kassena-Nankana West District as one of World Vision’s favorite operational areas, for which reason the NGO is hopeful that the various development interventions and the gains attained so far, would be sustained.
“… since 2008, World Vision has received so much support from the communities and the Kassena- Nankana West District Assembly towards our projects. This has contributed to improving the lives of families in our beneficiary communities.
… as the saying goes, ‘one good turn deserves another’. If someone does you a favour, you should take the chance to repay it. It was in this spirit that World Vision brought in more interventions to this District including the Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration project which is currently operating in the Eastern part of the district and the EU-LEAN project. I foresee other development interventions coming in the near future.”
The Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration project, according to Mr. Yelkabong, seeks to regenerate the degraded environment and equip farmers with knowledge and skills to diversify livelihood activities.
He explained: “… if children, who are our primary focus in the district, will experience improved well-being, then their parents and care-givers who are mainly into agriculture, must be supported to earn more from their endeavors. It is an open secret that, there is some disconnection between farmers, inputs dealers, service providers, processors and consumers. Agricultural value chain actors are oblivious of where to access products and services that enhances their various business interests.
There are situations where farmers have some produce to sell, and yet it is difficult to find favorable market conditions. This worsens the plight of the farmers and to address this situation, World Vision uses the Local Value Chain Development approach to help agriculture business by creating partnerships between producers, processors and marketers to improve quality, increase efficiencies and market differentiated products. … finding ways to improve the value chain is very important for raising smallholders’ incomes.”
Mr. Yelkabong noted that, if farmers are not linked to markets, they will end up producing just for subsistence and will continue to be in the poverty bracket.
This situation is what is making agriculture unattractive to the youth and the time to change the situation is now, especially when many young people are looking for sectors that reward their creativity and strength appropriately.
The District Chief Executive for Kassena-Nankana West, Gerard Ataogye, assured the commitment of the assembly to the implementation of all developmental interventions by World Vision and ensure that they are sustained even after the project duration.
He urged farmers to take advantage of the phase 2 of the Planting for Food and Jobs programme to produce more food and sell to improve on their livelihoods.
From: Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Paga