Christian Council holds post farmers day forum

Accra, Nov. 24, GNA - The Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) over the weekend held its third post farmers day forum in Accra with the objective of strengthening the rural woman’s participation in agriculture.   In all, 45 women small holder farmers mobilized from the Greater Accra, Eastern and Volta regions participated in the forum and were taken through topics such as policies and extension services available to support the rural woman and challenges in the rural economy.   Mr Andrews Frempong, Head of Programmes and Advocacy at CCG, said apart from winning souls for Christ, the Christian Council is also mandated not only to promote peace but to ensure that food was made available to all.   He said small holder famers in the rural communities who the majority constitutes women are being confronted with hikes in fertilizer prices, lack of transportation to carry their farming produce while in the mining areas, food crops and land are being destroyed by illegal miners.   He said issues such as credit, skewed extension services delivery, labour and inappropriate technology also affected the rural farmer especially women saying in the fishing sector, the issue of premix fuel and pair trolling is still a major concern to the fisher folks.   He appealed to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to support the smallholder farmers secured enough food and also earned profit.   Ms Victoria Aniaku, Representative from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, in a presentation said government has introduced policies and strategies such as gender and agriculture development strategy, food and agriculture development policy.   She said the policies and strategies being implemented by government were to migrate Ghanaian farmers from subsistence farming to a technological one and added that government would assist women small holder farmers to produce more.   Ms Joyce Larko Steiner, Senior Programme Manager for Human Rights and Gender at CCG, said a baseline survey that was conducted revealed that the issue of food security and child rights are related, with poverty being the main reason why children were trafficked and put through labour.   She said the post farmer’s day forum by the Council formed part of measures to promote food security and child rights and would end in 2013.   GNA... Read Full Story