The Upper West Regional Programme Manager of ActionAid, a non-governmental organization (NGO), Ms Terence Tienaah has called on traditional authorities and stakeholders to support women farmers in Northern Ghana to access fertile land for their vocation.
She said women farmers had limited access to land which according to her, limited their gains in agriculture hence the need for all to join hands to support women farmers to help boost agricultural production in this part of the country.
Ms Tienaah stated this on Wednesday at a stakeholders’ meeting at Wa on the Northern Ghana Integrated Development Project (NGIDP) by ActionAid, Ghana and funded by the European Union (EU).
The engagement meeting brought together various partners at the grassroots level of implementation in the region and sought to discuss sustainability plans as the project was exiting, focused on; “promoting opportunities for sustainable agriculture, social protection and decent work in the agrarian sector”
The NGIDP sought to facilitate the reduction of rural poverty by promoting environmentally-sustainable agricultural practices that would contribute to the nation’s green economy as well as create opportunities for income generation within the agricultural value chain, among other goals.
Ms Tienaah said to be able to sustain the agricultural sector for women farmers, it was vital that women were granted the right to adequate farm lands as was possible for their male counterpart.
“We are appealing again to reduce the practice where the woman would have to support her husband on his farm before going to theirs as it affected planting and harvesting period”, she said.
She said the project since its inception had trained 240 leaders of women farmer groups on advocacy and campaigns as well as organizational development and also conducted 120 community awareness sessions on women rights to access land and other productive resources in the region.
A beneficiary of the project, Madam Bogkur Patience, leader of the Lawra Te-nyogtaa women’s group said the project had helped them to adopt environmental friendly practices in their vocation.
She however added her voice to the call on Landlords and traditional authorities to make fertile lands available to women farmers in the various communities
She enumerated that difficulty in accessing fertile land and credit facilities were some of the challenges women in agriculture in the region were faced with.
 FROM RAFIA ABDUL RAZAK, WA