AGRICULTURE:Peasant farmers unhappy about delay of subsidized fertilizer

Vegetable production

The Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG) has expressed concern about the delay in the release of subsidized fertilizer on the market for the 2012 crop season.

Mohammed Adam Nashiru, President of PFAG, said farmers have since April planted their crops and yet there was no sign of subsidized
fertilizer on the market.

Mohammed Nashiru told the Ghana News Agency in Accra that “farmers are jittery and anxious” and called for the timely release of funds to fertilizer importers for consistence supply.

Ghana in 2003 joined other African countries to make a declaration
to devote at least 10 per cent of its national budget to the Agricultural
sector to maximize the potential of the sector as a strategy for food
security and poverty reduction.

He noted that as part of measures to address investment requirement of the sector, government has introduced policies such as the Food and Agricultural Sector Development Policy and the Medium Term Agricultural Sector Investment Plan to modernize agriculture.

Mohammed Nashiru said there were several challenges which threatened the effectiveness and sustainability of the subsidy programme including its relative high cost for small scale farmers and the difficulty in accessing the commodity by farmers on time.

He appealed to government to pragmatically approach the issue of delay in fertilizer subsidy with the needed urgency it deserved to make the commodity available at an affordable price to farmers.

He also called on government to provide additional incentives to small scale farmers to enable them afford relatively comfortable lives to spur them on to feed the nation.

Mohammed Nashiru called on the African Leaders attending the G8
Summit to be committed to a modest scale-up of food and nutrition
security investments from $ 7 billion to $ 10 billion a year in the final
3 years before the Millennium Development Goals cut-off date (2015)
rather than coming up with a new rhetoric.

GNA