Stakeholders advocate food system sustainable plan

Experts in the agricultural sector have called for support for a sustainable food system plan to develop small-scale farmers into agribusiness to promote the economy and food security.

Dr Abdul-Razak Mohammed, Agribusiness and Food Systems Specialist at Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR – SARI) said smallholders’ agricultural activities for commercial purposes had been considered one of the key strategies to sustainably reduce poverty in the country.

He said this during a training workshop for farmers in Karaga to promote agribusiness in the Northern Region.

The training was organised by the North Carolina Agriculture and Technical University and CSIR-SARI with support of the USDA-NIFA-UMES Center of Excellence for Global Food Security and Defense under the implementation of a project on Cultivating Productivity and
Resilience to Mitigate Food Insecurity in West-Central Africa.

The project is being implemented in communities in northern Ghana with components in innovation in agricultural production, international trade, and agri-business management.

Dr Mohammed urged stakeholders in the agricultural sector to address some of the challenges of farmers such as lack of formal management skills in agribusiness management and lack of access to financial assistance for smaller farmers, especially in the Northern Region.

He also entreated government to reduce the high cost of production and also to address poor irrigation facilities in the farming areas.

He advised farmers to take advantage of the entrepreneur environment to look for new opportunities in the market to satisfy their major goal such as profit marking.

He further appealed to agribusiness enterprises to use customer care skills to identify and locate their customers to grow their business.

He said “Buyers, who receive high quality products from agribusiness enterprises, gradually become their loyal customers.”