ACCRA, Ghana, March 4, 2016/APO (African Press Organization)/ —
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Ghana Grains Council together hosted the first-ever Annual Southern Ghana Agribusiness Pre-Harvest Event on March 3, 2016, in Kumasi, Ghana. The event brought together more than 300 maize and soybean farmers, processors, agro input dealers and others to discuss pertinent issues, forge partnerships, and develop market linkages.
The event is modeled off of the pre-harvest events that USAID holds regularly in northern Ghana. Agriculture stakeholders such as lending institutions, agribusinesses, development organizations and farmers convened in Kumasi to discuss topics such as agricultural lending, farmer-buyer collaboration and the maize marketplace. The last pre-harvest event was held in Tamale in October 2015. That event brought together nearly 1,000 farmers, buyers, processors, transporters, input dealers, farm machinery dealers, and financial institutions and mobilized more than 20,000 GHS from 10 private sector sponsors.
“At USAID, we believe that agriculture remains the best means of alleviating poverty and hunger in Ghana. Through President Obama’s initiative on global hunger and food security called Feed the Future, we work to make farming in Ghana more productive and profitable,” said USAID Economic Growth Office Deputy Director Brian Conklin. “This pre-harvest event is critical to these goals because it brings so many key players from the south’s agriculture sector together to learn from each other and form partnerships.”
The event was organized through USAID’s Agricultural Development and Value Chain Enhancement (ADVANCE) project, which is part of Feed the Future. Feed the Future is the U.S. government’s hunger and food security initiative, which works around the world to abolish extreme poverty, undernutrition and hunger. In Ghana, Feed the Future works to increase agricultural productivity, boost the harvests and incomes of rural smallholder farmers, teach families about improved nutrition practices, improve agricultural research and development and help communities better withstand crises like extreme climate events.
