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| Date: | Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:40:14 +0100 |
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I am Gabriel Adukpo, head of Department of Agriculture, Obuasi Municipal Assembly in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. One of my duties is to promote extension in the district. I have a few front line agricultural extension agents and their supervisors to execute that mandate.
I want to contribute to the discourse based on discussion topic No. 4.2
A number of gaps exist in the rural advisory services to family farmers. However the under-listed shortcomings became glaring when we implemented a sustainable livelihoods project together with a non-governmental organization (NGO) in the Eastern Region of Ghana.
In the first place it came out that our contact hours with farmers were too short prior to the project. Because of the reduced number of extension officers we tend to spread thin over a large number of family farmers. With the NGO coming in we went to the field with a pack of light refreshment for both farmers and staff. This prolonged our engagement with the farmers. We never gave them cash anyway.
We also realized that though the extension officers were technically imbued they lacked the soft skills to facilitate farmers' group formation and advocacy. When we worked on that gap, extension officers in the project area became more competent than their counterparts whose operational areas were not covered by the project.
Another good thing we did was that we were in teams comprising agricultural officers, community development staff and co-operative officers. This enabled different perspectives of rural development to be implemented to the advantage of family farmers. After the project we went our old ways because we live under different administrations.
The bottom line of the few gaps mentioned above is low level of funding to the public sector rural advisory services. I am always reluctant to mention funding but we can do little without enough financial support to the sector.
Gabriel Adukpo
Department of Agriculture
Obuasi Municipal Assembly
P. O. Box BI 300
Obuasi - Ashanti
Ghana
Tel: +233-277 47 22 93
Email: gyaduk(at)yahoo.comĀ
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