Smallholder Farmers in the Upper West Region are calling on Government to introduce tractor services in the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme to enable more farmers especially women to benefit from the much publicized programme.

According to a report by Watchghana.com, majority of the farmers under the Planting for Food and Jobs especially the less endowed ones predominantly women farmers, are unable to meet their expectations due to the lack of tractor services.

It is believed that men have dominated the programme in the three regions of the north, and that the few women farmers who are determined to brave the storms, do not usually get access to the tractor services or not on time, because they would have to compete with their male counterparts resulting in fatalities.

These concerns were raised at Nakori and Jonga during a Community Durbar organized by Ghana Trade and Livelihood Coalition (GTLC) on Gender Responsive Budgeting.

The Policy Officer for GTLC, Mr Emmanuel Wullingdool in a presentation of a survey report on the current government policies on agriculture such as Planting for Food and Jobs, One Village one dam, One District One Factory and One Village One warehouse, said there was an indication of high awareness of the programmes across the country but men remain the larger beneficiaries as compared to the women.

He confirmed that their survey indicated more women smallholder farmers do not get access to tractor services as compared to the men, and described it as necessary for government to find a solution to the challenge.

Some of the smallholder farmers at Nakori, a farming community in the Wa Municipality said, the PFJ programme is a nice initiative except that issues of ploughing are not addressed by the programme.

The participants noted that, “when the rainy season starts, accessing ploughing services from tractor operators is very difficult even when you have the money to pay for the service”. They said “sometimes it takes close to a month or more to get a tractor for ploughing by which time it is too late. Adding, “Some of our colleague farmers couldn’t farm this year due to their inability to get tractors to plough early. “We cannot control rain fall, it is natural but the readily availability of tractors and farm inputs will help a lot”.

In contributing to the discussion, the Assembly member for Jonga, Hon Abdul Karim Topie suggested that, government could improve upon the PFJ by providing tractors for smallholder farmer groups on hire purchase to curb the ordeal farmers go through in accessing ploughing services.

On the other hand, the farmers complained about the difficulties they go through in getting fertilizer coupons, even when they had the money to buy. “Even during this harvesting period through to the next farming season government should have had an agent and stores here in Jonga, so that we will be paying for the fertilizer small, small. And on the tractor issue to say the truth only a selected number of people easily access tractor services leaving most of us behind”.