The Secretariat of the Northern Rural Growth Programme (NRGP), established by the government to fight extreme poverty among farmers in northern Ghana has assembled a core working group of agricultural experts to work out modality to improve agricultural business in Ghana.
The working group would among other things formulate plans to promote agricultural business sector through the use of value chain techniques to make sector attractive segment the teaming unemployed youth.
The group, which comprises 42 agric-business experts, projects, consultants and organizations, and value chain experts, is to ensure the institutional arrangements that provide information and use of value chain techniques that would add values to agricultural products.
The group is also mandated to seek innovations in value chain financing, marketing of value chain produce and products and help train farmers and agriculture stakeholders how to mange business partnership in value chain development and to seek how agricultural commodity value chain would impact positively the rural poor farmers in Ghana.
The National Coordinator of NRGP Mr. Roy Ayariga disclosed this in an exclusive interview with the Enquirer after the end of a two-day consultative forum on value chain practices held in Tamale.
The forum was under the theme; “professionalizing value chain practices in Ghana” and organized by the northern Rural Growth Programme, sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and African Development Bank (AFDB) was parts of efforts to collate views, resources and professional ideas to develop a viable market for agriculture commodities to support poverty reduction among farmers.
Mr. Ayariga who was optimistic the group would work for the betterment of agric business indicated that the core aimed was to empower local farmers to produce more to feed the nation and for export.
“This will empower farmers economically when a market is developed for agric produces”
He explained that Ghanaian farmers over the years have been battling with poverty and deprivation because there was no viable market for their farms produces.
Mr. Ayariga stressed that NRGP was established by the government of Ghana and her partners to empower farmers and create a viable market and links to their products to fight poverty among them.
The value chain expert Mr. Pascal Dere with NRGP said adopting best practices in value chain would drastically improve the living conditions of farmers at the same times encourage large scale crops cultivation.
“The value chain practices are working elsewhere and empowered farmers in these countries and that can be done in Ghana too”, he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment