This is focusing on sustainable nutrition and higher agricultural productivity.it also seeks to compliment the effort of both Government and private sector in improving service provision by creating an enabling environment for people to have access to sufficient and affordable nutritious food.
Title: THE ENTERPRISE GARDENING
Gardens are generally celebrated for their contribution to improving food and nutrition security, increasing income generation and more recently as a source of gainful employment. The enterprise gardening component of PLG’s ECOSOC program is closely linked to the Government of Ghana’s strategy for poverty reduction: improving food security by increasing production and market access for vegetable. The ability of rural farmers to meet the increasing demand for vegetables however, is hampered by a lack of skills, technical and logistical support as well as access to credit.
So far sixty(60) vegetable farmers from two farmer groups have received varieties of improved vegetable seeds and two water pumping machines from the project in an effort to help increase productivity and income. We have also provided training for 60 farmers so far to adopt modern vegetable production and post-harvest handling techniques to be able to improve their productivity. The project has established a network of vegetable farmers in the west mamprusi Municipal to advocate for enabling vegetable business development in the North East region for more jobs and better human and environmental health.
Sulemenan Abdulai is one of last year’s flood victims in Banawa community near Walewale who lost his maize farm to floods. He is a beneficiary of our enterprise gardening intervention.He received okra and cabbage seeds from our intervention.
The major challenge for the implementation of this component so far is the lack of a meaningful dam for farmers to irrigate their vegetables. farmers rely on small dug outs for water. Other challenges include disturbance of gardens by grazing castle.
Title: IMPROVING FOOD SECURITY THROUGH CLIMATE SMART AGRICULTURE
In many countries in Africa, food insecurity is increasing. Drought is a key factor, but farming practices are also a major cause. In Ghana, Food insecurity is a particular issue in rural areas, where agriculture is the main economic activity.
Developing the food security programme
Peace for Life Ghana (PLG) first carried out a needs assessment in four communities in the West Mamprusi Municipal. The results showed that the lack of food in the area was partly caused by the farming practices used over the years. The needs assessment also showed that some farmers in the area had reaped a successful harvest in recent years due to their knowledge and practice of conservation farming methods over a long period of time.
After the needs assessment, PLG worked alongside farmer groups to design a food and nutrition security programme. This programme is targeting more than 1,000 households. One of the key parts of the programme is the promotion of conservation farming in place of the conventional farming methods that are being widely used in the area. PLG decided to work alongside the Ministry of Agriculture to distribute information about conservation farming to the smallholder farmers targeted by the programme. Community meetings were held in which the programme was explained to the target households. Later on, training on conservation farming was carried out to train people to become trainers at community level. So far 80 people have been trained. These trainers are expected to train individual farmer households through village-based training workshops.
Some of the training topics so far include:
- protecting the soil from being washed away, improving water infiltration and reducing soil temperatures
- Maintaining soil structure and fertility when termites and worms incorporate them into the soil.
- Ploughing the whole field wastes energy, reduces yields and destroys the soil.
- Farmers usually plough after the rains. This means that there is a delay in preparing the land. For each day of delay after the first planting rains, some of the potential yield is lost.
- The ploughed soil is exposed to wind and rain which remove the surface soil.
Title: PROMOTING FOOD SECURITY THROUGH AN ENHANCED RICE PRODUCTION
Members of Peace for Life Ghana farmer-based groups are recording low yield and poor quality paddy rice as a result of inadequate rice farming knowledge and skills. This problem has Persisted since the formation of the groups in 2012. The groups are producing averagely 10bags per acre but with low quality. It is as a result of the skills gap in modern rice farming practices that is resulting into producing very low quality paddy rice which are very unattractive to major Processing companies like AVNASH Company in Tamale that gives higher prices for specifications of quality paddy rice produce. About 80% of our members’ rice produce do not meet those specifications and are thereby rejected.
These rejected quantity of our paddy rice are sold in the local market at very low prices thereby resulting in low revenue and profit for our members. The skill gap cut across the whole value chain of rice farming practices.
PLG proposed Skills training in modern best rice farming technologies throughout the value chain rice farming practices. These included skills training in modern rice farm land preparation, skills in bund construction practice, row planting skills, skills in rouging, skills in on-farm water management, disease and pest control, moisture content determination skills and timely harvest as well as usage of improved rice seed that has high yield potency. It was in this regard that PLG applied for the SDF grant to train its members on modern rice farming technologies in order to produce high quality paddy rice and also increase its productivity level to the average recommended yield of 25 – 30 bags per an acre and with higher quality after the first year of training.
General Objective:
To increase higher productivity and competitiveness of quality paddy rice of members through innovative skills training in best-bet rice farming practices.
Specific Objectives:
1. To practically equip 50 members with modern innovative skills in quality paddy rice production
2. To increase the production levels of members’ paddy rice from 10bags to 25bags per acre within the first year after the SDF training
3. To increase the competitiveness of our quality paddy rice to meeting higher standards and specifications in the rice industry.
Trained 50 farmers on modern methods of rice farming in Zangum, West Mamprusi Municipal.
Sensitization forum at Kukua on the gender component of the government flagship program planting for food and jobs program.
