Updated: Aug 17, 2018
The Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana is beginning the implementation of a programme to monitor government flagship agricultural projects.
The farmer group intends to monitor the famous Planting for Food and Jobs, One Village One Dam and the One district One Factory projects and to assess how they perform.
Speaking to Joy News’ Martha Crentsil Acquah on the sidelines of an inception meeting in Accra, the Director of Programmes at the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, Charles Nyaaba said the planting for food and jobs programme is a good initiative but could ‘be eroded by corruption’.
He noted that the programme will among other activities, identify representatives who will actively monitor implementation of the agricultural flagship programmes and make recommendations to the implementing agencies.
The second pillar of the project will ensure consumers are eating healthy food through ‘healthy farming’ that is to promote the food with minimal inputs’ Charles Nyaaba added.
Mr. Nyaaba revealed the PFAG with support and funding from Open Society Initiative for West Africa, (OSIWA) would put up agro-ecology farms in Western and central Regions in addition to an existing one in the Brong Ahafo region.
“We will also engage government in a policy dialogue after training farmers to adopt the concept. After that we will show the success stories for the government to see the need to increase investment in the agro-ecology farming” Mr. Nyaaba noted.
He explained though the agroecology will focus mainly in Central and Western Regions, the monitoring of the government flagship agricultural programmes will be carried out across the country.
“We suspect the GMOs being pushed on us by foreign multinational business companies are just to make a profit without thinking about our health… They use our own people to promote GMOs without eating that” hence we have to produce our own seeds so we can grow and eat healthy food.
The project on agroecology and monitoring of government’s flagship programmes is a continuation of a similar project started in 2015 but the current lap will run from August 2018 to 2020.
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