MAKE LAND ACCESSIBLE TO WOMEN IN AGRIC (PAGE 11, NOV 9, 2010)

CHIEFS in the Northern Region have been called upon to enhance women’s participation in agriculture by making fertile lands available to them .
A gender specialist with the Northern Rural Growth Programme (NRGP), Ms Amina Alhassan Salih, who made the call, explained that women were either denied land for farming or given lands that were infertile and located far from their communities, thereby impeding their drive to engage meaningfully in Agriculture.
She was speaking at Sakpegu, a community in the Yendi municipality, during a gender awareness durbar aimed at sensitising inhabitants to the need for women to have equal opportunities in Agriculture.
The durbar was organised by the NRGP in line with its efforts to mainstream gender concerns into the implementation of the programme.
The NRGP is a $104 million agric support project aimed at transforming agric in the three northern regions and parts of the Brong Ahafo Region and it is co-funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), African Development Bank (ADB) and the Government of Ghana.
Ms Salih noted that apart from difficulties in land ownership, women farmers were also discriminated against when it comes to access to finance, access to markets, access to inputs and access to information.
She said rural women farmers had also been pushed to the labour-intensive and less lucrative areas of Agriculture which had contributed to their slow rise.
Ms Salih told the chiefs and the family heads that it would be an added advantage to their homes if their wives, who were engaged in farming, were adequately supported.
“The women are those who cater for the homes and, therefore, if they have the capability to bring home extra incomes, it would reduce the burden on you the men and improve your livelihoods,” she stated.
She therefore entreated the men to allow their women to join farmer-based organisations to facilitate their access to finance, inputs and relevant extension services.
The gender specialist mentioned that the NRGP had a gender component that would give equal opportunities to all players in the agric sector, irrespective of their gender, and eschew any form of gender discrimination in the implementation process.
She said in order to support women in Agric, the NRGP would give adequate attention to the aspects of the commodity value-chain dominated by women, such as the production, processing and marketing of crops that included shea-nut , moringa, paddy rice and sesame.
In a speech read on his behalf, the District Chief Executive (DCE) of Yendi, Mr Issah Zakaria, noted that to address gender discrimination in agric, efforts must be made towards erasing the stereotyping of women as only fit for the home.
He also stressed the need for capacity-building of women in the commodity value-chain to enable them to assert themselves and make the desired impact.
Mr Zakaria further noted that improving the situation of women farmers could help the country meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on gender equity and poverty reduction.
He said as women gained more leverage in the agriculture sector, it increased their incomes, thereby shoring up household incomes as women spent most of their resources on their families.