World Vision has said it is working to end food scarcity in northern Ghana in the next five years.
Gushegu Cluster Food Insecurity officer at World Vision, Pastor Joseph Alhassan told Adom News Reporter, Kwame Kulenu, the main occupation in the area is farming but they lack the technics for high yields from their farms.
He added that human activities such as cutting down trees degrading of lands have also affected the soil fertility causing low productivity.
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Pastor Joseph Alhassan said World Vision is, therefore, giving technical assistance to farmers in the area to boost their yields and that has encouraged more people to go into farming.
He believes if the trend continues, food scarcity should be a thing of the past in the next five years.
Pastor Alhassan noted that research by UN Food and Agricultural Organization showed that about 805 million people worldwide do not have enough food to eat, out of which 791 million are from developing countries that was why World Vision chose to support farmers in Gushegu where farming is predominant.
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He observed that Economic Times 2015 also revealed each night one out of ten children go to bed hungry and UNICEF 2016 Report indicated that 1.2 million children are not able to get adequate food and 870 million women do not eat nutritious food for a healthy life.
“This situation is very worrying and needs urgent solution hence the establishment of Food Insecurity Center at Geshegu by World Vision to drive a solution,” he said.
Pastor Joseph Alhassan stated further that they chose Northern Region because it is one of the areas suffering from food insecurity.
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He said World Vision has introduced Savings and Transformation System where they have provided a farmer with a money box to encourage them to save with the supervision of World Vision, and use their savings to secure loans to expand their farming.
Pastor Alhassan said they have been running this programme for the past four to five years and so far it has benefitted over one thousand people in both crop and cattle farming.
“We believe this system will even encourage more people to start farming and thereby give a boost to the drive towards eliminating food scarcity,” he said.