The non-governmental organization Green for Change Ghana, based in the Savannah Region, has advised cashew farmers, particularly the younger ones in the region, to refrain from working in isolation and competing among themselves.
The organization highlighted that 88% of smallholder farmers in Ghana are involved in cashew farming but are marginalized within the value chain.
To address this, Green for Change Ghana, in partnership with Nathan Associates, initiated a project called “Empowering Small Holder Cashew Farmers for a Sustainable Future.”
The project involved training 300 smallholder cashew farmers to enhance their knowledge and skills in producing quality cashew nuts and preventing post-harvest losses.
Mr. John Balankoo Sumbo in an interview with Myjoyonline said their focus is, “that, if farmers produce or harvest their nuts to meet these qualities, they can get premier prices for their Cashew nuts”.
The project, implemented in collaboration with the Ghana Trade and Investment Program, was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Feed the Future program.
The initiative aimed to empower smallholder cashew farmers for a sustainable future by providing them with the necessary training and knowledge to improve the quality of their cashew production and enhance their participation in the value chain.
The Executive Director added that the project evaluation served as a potent platform for beneficiaries and stakeholders to share their success, the outcome of the implementation, the lesson learned, challenges encountered, and the way forward.
The project was implemented in six communities in the West Gonja Municipality.
They include Bonyanto, Soalepe, and Tarlorpe. The rest are Achebunyor, Businu and Jonokponto.
The Executive Director indicated that before the implementation of the project, surveillance was carried out with stakeholder consultation, engagement of key actors within the cashew value-chain, so as to “introduce to them what they are doing to also prevent duplication of efforts by having several Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) doing the same thing in the value chain”.
“We engaged them in the project intervention and we got their buy-in and cooperation after the six-month and after the implementation period, we needed to share with them the outcome of the implementation”.
One of the beneficiaries, Alidu Shahadu, expressed gratitude on behalf of his colleagues to Green for Change Ghana for the training. He promised to make good use of the knowledge acquired, emphasizing the positive impact it would have on their households and the cashew industry.
“In fact, during the training, it was interesting to know our weaknesses and things we were not doing right. But now, we have put them behind us and to work together, to support ourselves by putting into use the knowledge we acquired from the six months training”, Alidu Shahadu explained.
An officer from the West Gonja Municipal Agriculture Department, Ezekiel Akwasi Gariba lauded the intervention describing it as an eye-opener to the farmers who have suffered at the hands of middlemen.
“And I know that from now on, these farmers would not allow any middlemen to cheat them with their low prices again”, he stressed.
The NGO in partnership with the forest division and World Vision Ghana, distributed a total of 2,645 seedlings of Kapok, mango, and baobab for reforestation and environmental preservation.