The Upper East Region's smallholder women farmers have been encouraged to include soya beans and sorghum in their farming operations in order to take advantage of the vast and ready markets and improve their livelihoods.
The National Facilitator of Forest and Farm Facility of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in charge of Ghana, Mr. Elvis Kuudaar, stated that there were market opportunities, particularly for sorghum, soya beans, maize, and fish, and urged them to incorporate such farming practices into their operations.
During a working visit to some Upper East Region Forest and Farm Facility project sites, he gave the advice in an address to the Maltaaba Women Peasant Farmers’ Cooperative, a group of vegetable and tree farmers in Yakort in the Nabdam District.
Mr. Kuudaar advised them to broaden their farming horizons and improve their ability to buy and sell to businesses like Guinness Ghana, which urgently requires sorghum for the production of Guinness and other related beverages.
He promised the women that his organization would be ready to provide them with automated boreholes so that they could participate in such activities and added that they would make sure that all of the communities were involved in the effort to boost production.
He specifically mentioned that the majority of landmarks in the five regions of the north were endowed with water, which could be used for all-purpose farming instead of relying solely on dams, which occasionally ran dry and left farmers disappointed.
The National Facilitator urged the beneficiaries of the project to begin the process by diversifying their vegetable farming to include sorghum, soya beans, and maize in order to use that as the basis to attract more support from FAO. He suggested that the government consider such interventions in the future rather than relying solely on the One Village, One Dam projects.
“You, as smallholder farmers, could produce three times as much in a year, thereby making more for ready market, to help you improve upon your livelihoods, with underground water and this kind of diversifications involving the entire community. He emphasized, "This is what the project is interested in."
The leader of the Maltaaba Peasant Women Farmers' Cooperative, Mrs. Banininmah Touah, thanked FAO for supporting the women, many of whom were widows or single parents. She said that many of them had been able to sell the vegetables they had harvested from their farms to help pay for their family's needs, such as paying for their children's school fees and National Health Insurance premiums.
She, on the other hand, pleaded for an overhead tank to assist in irrigating their extensive farms and fencing, and she promised that they would incorporate maize, soy beans, and sorghum farming into their vegetable farming activities.
The Executive Secretary of Maltaaba Peasant Women Farmers' Cooperative, Madam Lydia Miyella, stated that the facility's assistance enabled the women farmers to acquire a mechanized borehole for farming, particularly during the dry season.
She stated that the project had also developed the group's capacity to utilize alternative means such as animal droppings, grass, and plant stocks to produce compost manure for framing rather than chemical fertilizers, weedicides, and pesticides, which had harmful effects on the plant, soil fertility, and some water sources.
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