As the government reviews its flagship program, Planting for Food and Jobs, PFJ, the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana wants explanations for the surge in prices, availability, and quality fertilizers.
The Association also calls for a review to look at why the agriculture extension officers in the regions refuse to offer the needed input for smallholder farmers who are the main target of the PFJ.
At a stakeholder validation workshop, the Executive Director of the Association, Peter Charles Naba said some grassroots farmers want the PFJ scrapped due to considerable loss in the program.
“You’ve realised that the farmers complain of price escalation from 96 Ghana cedis per kilo of the APK which were between 96 to 106 cedis. In 2021, it increased to 320 cedis in 2022.
When we started in 2021, the government pegged the subsidised 25 kilos at 48 cedis within the same year before we even started buying it increased to 53. But in 2022, the same 25-kilo subsidy went up to 160 cedis,” He said.
The National President of the Association, Awal Adugwala touched on some of the recommendations they have made to be part of the review which they believe would help the program.
As part of the review we need to target inputs through the farmer-based organisation because the farmers are organised together, so we do expect that the reviews and part of the recommendations should be that inputs should be channelled to the farmer-based organisations so that we can directly target our farming. That will even save the government the struggle,” Mr Adugwala stated.
