HOLIFE empowers rural women in farming

House of Liberation for Empowerment (HOLIFE) has held a sensitization workshop on land tenure and ownership for women in agriculture in the Upper West Region. The one day workshop which was attended by Queen Mothers in the region and leaders in the agricultural sector majored on findings from a research conducted on rural women in agriculture with the view of helping them to secure lands for farming over a long period of time.

In an interaction with Joy News, Mrs. Evelyn Debar, Director for HOLIFE said the workshop was very vital to the survival of women who currently depend on agricultural activities to feed their families.

She said HOLIFE supports rural women in the region with micro credit facilities to farm but added that they lose the farmlands annually to their respective owners thereby creating the problem of reinvesting to acquire new arable lands.

The Director added that most of the women depend on farming for their ancillary livelihood though they had other ancillary things doing while over 80 percent of them loose or beg for their land for farming.

“They are unable to invest freely on the land hence they have low yields and income, inadequate food and other basic needs are also not met”, she said. “To solve the problem we engaged BUSAC to aid in embarking on a research to reveal the hardships our rural women face in order to draft an effective solution.

From the research 70 percent of our women are farmers and we believe that if women are given the chance to farm they will be alleviated from poverty not just within the family level but at the national level also’’, she explained.

Mrs. Debar also used the occasion to appeal to landowners, traditional authorities and all government agencies in the agricultural sector to help women in securing farmlands in order to improve their livelihood.