By: Linda Dede Nyanya Godji
A strong and formidable agricultural sector is key in solving food security, nutrition, and income generation issues. However, the inability for smallholder farmers to improve on their productivity remains a threat to these prospects agriculture gives.
Not only do subsistence or smallholder farmers have difficulty accessing high-quality inputs, such as quality seeds, modern machinery, and training, they also lack financial support for making it difficult for them to improve their productivity and efficiency.
It is for this reason Warc Ghana, a social enterprise is poised to change the narrative of these smallholder farmers by increasing their yields and getting them out of poverty.
In an interview with agrighanaonline.com, the Managing Director of Warc Ghana Mr. Christopher Zaw, stressed that increased productivity of smallholder farmers can go a long way to solve food security and nutritional issues faced in the country.
“Our main focus is to improve production processes at the smallholder farmer level to move them away from subsistence to becoming commercial farmers. Our main objective is to support farmers in Africa to increase their incomes and protect their soils, turning subsistence farmers into commercial farmers and becoming true climate heroes” he added.
The crop focus for Warc Ghana is on staple grains and legumes, with key crops being maize and soybean, beans, sorghum, millet, and rice.
Mr. Zaw who doubles as a partner for Warc Group, also stated solving food security issues is at the core of the organization. “Warc designs and delivers bundles of regenerative agricultural inputs as a service, on finance to smallholder farmers. This bundle includes inputs to production such as high-quality seeds (e.g. hybrid maize), crop protection, and fertilizers, weekly on-farm training of good agricultural practices, and guaranteeing a fair market for the crops. “He said.
Warc also trains rural workers and young university graduates to become qualified machine operators, technicians, and agronomists on a large-scale commercial training farm.
Through its current partnership with the West Africa Trade & Investment Hub, Warc Ghana looks forward to supporting farmers in the Upper West region to enhance their farming production through modern agricultural practices by providing access to mechanization services to become commercial farmers, and access to quality bundles of inputs for maize and soybean production and to use to improve post-harvest practices.
The partnership also aims to improve farming systems in the Upper West region through the modernization of markets and technology. The partnership will link 20,000 smallholder farmers to 20 commercial buyers throughout the country and incorporate market data so that farmers can access and assess current market information and prices.
(About Warc Ghana /Group)
Warc is a social enterprise with operations in Sierra Leone and Ghana, with a mission to get subsistence African farmers out of poverty. Our vision is that Africa will elevate itself to feed the world within our lifetime. Warc runs three operations in Ghana and Sierra Leone on over 1,500 hectares, and have had a deep impact on over 2,500 farmers to date, and have trained another 10,000 farmers under extension. Warc was first established in 2011 in Sierra Leone and then expanded to Ghana in 2018.
Warc has assembled a strong consortium with international commercial partners such as John Deere/Tata, Corteva, Valmont and research partners such as the Soybean Innovation Lab at the University of Illinois and the Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation at Texas A&M University to ensure adequate knowledge and resources to achieve desired results.
