Ghana – Southern Horticulture Zones Project

Improving the Standards of living for Ghanian Farmers

In Ghana’s southern horticulture zone, ACDI/VOCA works to increase agricultural productivity, high-value commercial and basic food crop production, and private-sector investment in agriculture to boost farmers’ incomes and improve overall community well-being.

The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) Ghana funds the 3 ½ year, $5.4 million project as part of its $547 million Commercial Development of Farmer-Based Organizations (FBOs) initiative, which prepares farmers groups for commercial activity.

ACDI/VOCA’s Ghana team supports local FBOs using a market-driven, value chain-based approach to prioritize commercially viable agricultural activities that have the potential to be upgraded and will benefit large numbers of farm households. In addition to market conditions, social and environmental impact are also weighed.

The program also helps link farmers to markets by coordinating and leveraging its activities with other Ghanaian agriculture projects and through other local development partners.

Farmers Connect to Markets

The ACDI/VOCA Ghana team facilitates and strengthens market linkages between FBOs and aggregators, exporters and processors of five selected value chains: chilies, maize, mangos, pineapple and rice.

Under the first phase of the project, FBO members increased their commercial skills through farmer and enterprise training in commercial agriculture. With support from technical and training service providers, the team trained 286 FBOs and 12,832 farmers, and facilitated agreements between the FBOs and 9 different buyers.

ACDI/VOCA also assisted FBO members to use improved farming technology and best practices for activities such as site selection and land preparation, fertilizer use, and harvesting and post-harvesting, which FBOs have adopted at high rates.

Strong Value Chains

In March 2010, the Millennium Development Authority awarded ACDI/VOCA an extension to implement Phase B of the program, which will further strengthen the identified agricultural value chains. Key to this effort is findings ways for the farmers to collaborate with the larger firms and service providers they depend on for markets and services. These include: AMSEC, Dizengoff Ltd., Finatrade, the Ghana Grains Council, NAMSECO, Olam, Prairie Volta Ltd., RST, VegPro, and numerous local input companies and suppliers.

The program also is increasing farmers’ access to and use of irrigation facilities and post-harvest infrastructure.

To date, the project has:

• trained over 20,000 farmers,

• linked 5 FBOs to pineapple exporters,

• assisted FBOs in 4 districts to cultivate 53 acres of bird’s eye chili,

• arranged pre-purchase finance agreements with buyers in pineapples and rice, and

• piloted Ghana’s first warehouse receipts program.

Preserve the Environment

Throughout the life of the project, ACDI/VOCA has implemented environmental and social management plans to ensure that farmers understand and use sound environmental practices. Currently, the 398 trained FBOs all have environmental management plans in place.

For more information contact John Madigan at jmadigan@acdivoca.org.

Updated: 2/11

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