Representatives of Farmer-Based Organizations (FBO) from Anglophone West Africa are attending a five-day capacity-building workshop in Accra to strengthen farmers’ capacity to respond to changing agriculture markets.
The European Commission-funded programme is to enable the farmers to learn and share ideas on record keeping, financial management, feasibility studies and cost benefit analysis.
The farmers would also share ideas on their professional management and organizational skills to enable them to define business objectives and implement plans, appraise market opportunities and
threats, organize group marketing and manage financial capital effectively.
Professor Ben Ahunu, Provost of College of Agriculture and Consumer Sciences at the University of Ghana, stressed the importance
of capacity building to achieve food and nutrition security in Africa.
He said the University of Ghana had over the years collaborated with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the training
farmers in food security and that the University would continue to build stronger relations with FAO to produce the needed results in the food value chain.
He said market competition meant that the various actors in food production, including processors, producers, exporters and buyers,
should deal in larger volumes of high quality products at lower prices for them to remain profitable.
Professor Ahunu said it was important for farmer organizations to reorient themselves in the provision of market services to compete
effectively and participate in commodity value chains.
Dr Cheikh Ly, Regional Animal Production and Health Officer of FAO, said farmer organizations could not be expected to solve all problems of market linkage imperfections.
He said the opening up of markets had meant that small farmers and other players in agriculture had to organize and interact with one
another differently since current markets demanded larger volumes, lower prices and higher quality produce.
Dr Ly said farmer organizations could support small farmers to move away from subsistence agriculture and tap into more lucrative and demanding markets.