WOMEN IN FOOD AND AGRIC LEADERSHIP FORUM AND EXPO (WOFAGRIC)/ GOLD IN THE SOIL AWARDS

WOMEN IN FOOD AND AGRIC LEADERSHIP FORUM AND EXPO (WOFAGRIC)/ GOLD IN THE SOIL AWARDS

by | Mar 22, 2019 | Article

WOFAGRIC is Agrihouse Foundation’s expert opinion sharing, mentoring, networking and learning platform for women in agriculture,  agribusiness, key stakeholders, development partners, researchers, farmer groups, government agencies, business, civil society, investment and professional advisors and corporate leaders.

WOFAGRIC forms part of efforts to empower women, promote their works, expand their horizon, recognize and award their works and further mentor and inspire other women to venture into Agribusiness.

This year’s event, themed,” Women, Key Partners in Shading Agribusiness” will hold in Ho- Volta Region on the 12th and 13th of June, 2019. The event is being organized in collaboration with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Women in Food and Agriculture Development, COCOSHE, Peasant Farmers Association, National Farmers and Fishermen Award Winners Association and the Volta Regional arm of the Ghana National Farmers and Fishermen Association.

The two day event would be climaxed with the Gold in the Soil Awards to distinguish and award women for their invaluable contribution towards Agriculture and Agribusiness

 

EXPLORING THE THEME:  “Women! Key Partners in Shaping Agribusiness.

What does the future hold for the backbone of the economy and the sub-regional basket? What impact are women having in shaping and directing the conversation on production, processing, communications, marketing? Are there favorable policies? How are farm related components of the rural economy contributing to income generation and employment? What is the Government planning next for women in Agribusiness? How are we contributing to women’s empowerment and agricultural entrepreneurship? Are women very well exposed to the aspects of planning, development and management of businesses in agro-industries? What are the plans and initiatives or donor agencies to support women in agribusiness? What is the way forward? Is it the dawn of a new day? Have or can women take their place in the sector full of opportunities?

Join and support us, as we seek to discuss and find answers to our five (5) main topics:

  1. How to start and manage and agribusiness
  2. The essence of marketing and branding in agribusiness
  3. Support systems and best practices in promoting agribusiness
  4. How can women use agribusiness to bring solutions to Ghana’s economic, social and environmental challenges
  5. What factors are necessary for good agricultural production?

The Women in Food and Agric Forum and the Gold in the soil Awards, will bring together over two hundred stakeholders; top achievers from the industry and heavy weight thought leaders alongside inspiring individuals from outside the confines of the Agricultural sector, who aspire in their daily lives to bring about new thinking, share knowledge and learn from industry experts.

The above topics have been carefully selected from leads and recommendations, as well as major issues trending in the agricultural sector.

 

MAIN ACTIVITIES FOR THE Two (2) DAY EVENT:

  1. Panel Discussion: Key Issues affecting women in Agribusiness
  2. Focused Training Programs for female Agri-prinuers
  3. Breakout Session: Mentorship Dialogue
  4. Presentation : Career Opportunities for Women in Agribusiness
  5. Empowerment Talk: Fire in my heart and Grace in My soul
  6. Mentor-Pair-Up: Aspire to be
  7. Exhibitions
  8. Gold in the Soil Awards / Documentary

 

Background

The agricultural landscape is largely dominated by women who make up almost half the world’s farmers. Most of the small holders, including women in agriculture, have less access to education and finance which makes it more difficult for them to adopt new technologies. Research shows that agriculture productivity in developing countries could increase 20-30 percent, if women are given the same access to resources as men. Apart from poverty-reduction benefits to women in agriculture, improving the productivity of existing agricultural lands is a critical way of addressing deforestation and climate change.

As part of efforts to continuously improve and recognize the effort of women in the Agricultural industry and to bring dynamism into the fore, Agrihouse will be organizing the Women in Food and Agriculture Leadership Conference & Expo (WOFAGRIC) which is aimed at showcasing through exhibitions, the works, products and services of women in Agric. in Ghana and beyond. The event purely focuses on Smallholder Women in Agriculture, whiles building capacity, alongside the 2day event.

 

Rationale

WOFAGRIC seeks to pay tribute to the efforts and contribution by women, young female ‘agripreneurs’, female students and women with disabilities for their roles toward ensuring food security, poverty alleviation, employment creation and ultimately helping the economy.

Benefits

WOFAGRIC seeks to recognize pioneers and trailblazers; the women who push the boundaries along the value chain. From the days of Adam to Tetteh – Quarshie, men have been considered to be at the forefront of agriculture. Women who have dared to challenge this stereotype have been looked at in a not-so- encouraging light. Though there has been a lot of work to increase visibility of women achievers in all industries, women still need and want to see other women role models.

Identifying exceptional women who others can relate to via women-only awards is a step in providing the much-needed examples currently lacking in many traditional awards. The end goal would be to have a level playing field among the genders but currently, we do not. Women are outnumbered by men in the executive talent pool in almost all industries for a number of cultural bias reasons.

Agrihouse Foundation and her partners believe there need to be a paradigm shift in this regard by projecting women achievers in agribusiness.

 

It also aims to promote networking among women achievers in agribusiness and propel them to do more collectively.

 

WOFAGRIC will undertake three (3) main segments as follows:

  1. WOFAGRIC Exhibitions of improved technologies

The exhibition will bring together all the relevant women actors within the sector with the potential to stimulate increased staple crop productivity among small holder farmers including women. It will focus on Innovation bringing together buyers and sellers of the latest technology of products and services to make your business successful.

  1. The WOFAGRIC Mentorship Dialogue

The two-day Conference will be organized alongside the two-day exhibition to help build capacity of women farmers, entrepreneurs and women in agriculture.

The Conference is aimed at providing a platform to exchange best practices and share        

valuable lessons learnt in handling and overcoming challenges in agribusiness.

The WOFAGRIC conference also seeks to facilitate dialogue between various actors in the Agribusiness space among women. The conference will present the platform to

catalyze actions and refine their interventions in order to better respond to the needs;

Advocate for inclusive value chains and agricultural market systems to support women in agribusiness.

  1. The WOFAGRIC Awards ( Gold in the Soil Awards)

Gold in the Soil Awards: The awards sessions aim at recognizing and rewarding outstanding women in Agriculture. A documentary on activities and impact of these women will be produced to be to be aired on TV and social media platforms to showcase the works of these women and an award ceremony, organized to celebrate them

 

AWARD CATEGORIES FOR THE GOLD IN THE SOIL AWARDS

  1. Passion for the Farm Awards

The award recognizes those who have achieved excellence in their field or demonstrated an extraordinary contribution to the agribusiness industry.

This category targets awarding women who are farming in their own right or in a partnership. These women should have made essential contribution(s) to the success and profitability of the farm dovetailing into creation of jobs and improving the economy of the country.

  1. She-innovates Award

This category seeks to look out for a woman who looked at the community in relation to the farm, identified challenges and saw immense opportunity through diversification and eventually makes a success story out of that business idea.

Iii. The Super Woman Award

      This special category goes to women with disabilities for the roles they play towards ensuring food security, poverty alleviation, job creation and economic growth in the Agric sector.

Iv. Star in Ag Award (Woman Agripreneur Award)

This special recognition goes out to young women with great achievements in the agribusiness industry

 

  1. Royal Carla Award (Queen mothers)

Through this award, we identify a traditional leader (Queen mother) whose long-

term and active engagement in helping women get access to farmlands in our

Community has had a significant, positive impact on agribusiness.

 

vi Diamond in the rough award

A potential agripreneur not seen or recognized but has the capabilities to be

outstanding. Smaller projects/business models started would be evaluated and

 

vi Poultry and Livestock

This is to a woman with great determination and integrity who has continuously

demonstrated a positive role in poultry and livestock and has an unwavering

commitment to succeed in this sector. They have made a series of significant selfless

contributions with a long-lasting benefit to this sector.

 

Criteria for Selection

The awards are open to women aged 18 and above from every district in Ghana. There can be direct entries or one could be nominated by friends or family by filling in an application form online or picking a form from the offices of Agrihouse foundation.

Nomination package must include:

  1. A typed profile, not to exceed 500 words, describing the agricultural work of the nominee and in their community.
  2. Two nominators, providing letters of recommendation (not to exceed one page each) and contact information.
  3. The nominee’s contact information.

What Happens Then?

All applications and nominations must be sent in before the closing date of  Wednesday 1st May, 2019.

Shortlisted nominations will then be visited by a panel of judges. You must be available to receive a visit from the judging panel during the week commencing (date to be communicated)

Email entries to agrihousefoundation@gmail.com  or albertaakosa@outlook.com or submitted at the offices of Agrihouse Foundation.

For full details call:  0244623012 / 0242945108 / 0249980957 /0540386759.

Expected Result and Benefit over the Medium to Long Term

Women role in agriculture has been under estimated and undervalued for a long time. This to an extent has contributed to ladies venturing into other fields such as Management, HR, Science and Technology, entertainment just to mention a few with just a fraction of them taking up careers in agriculture. WOFAGRIC will help put women’s contribution in agriculture at the forefront and showcase their products and services. This will throw more light on their activities which will motivate other women to see role models in these accomplished ‘womenpreneurs’.

The Conference and capacity building component of the program will help small holder women farmers identify untapped potentials in the Agric sector and help them create jobs on their own with assistance from the role models who will serve as mentors.

WOFAGRIC awards will recognize and honor the contribution of accomplished women. This will spur them on to do more and serve as a challenge for others. In the long run, more women would be in the Agric space helping create more employment.

With its consistency, it will continue to play that facilitation role that has largely been missing.

The WOFAGRIC Event will continue to ensure that deliberate attention is focused on women in agribusiness as this will help Ghana achieve and maintain even more growth in the agriculture sector.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CONSEQUENCE FOR AGRICULTURE

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CONSEQUENCE FOR AGRICULTURE

by | Mar 22, 2019 | Article

Since time immemorial, hunger has managed to stay in vogue despite the colossal benefit of agriculture. Despite plentiful harvest that is often recorded around the world, a myriad of factors have ensured that a significant number of people worldwide have hunger staring them in the face.

Today, the world is rallying a united front to fashion out a practical solution to address this challenge – along with expanding agricultural land and intensifying crop yields – the world is also relying on global agricultural trade to meet the nutritional demands of growing world population.

While this is a welcome development, human-induced climate change has recently come to the fore as a budding threat to world food security.

According to recent studies, climate change will affect global markets by reshaping agricultural trading patterns. Some regions may not be able to battle climate impacts on agriculture, in which case production of key commodities will decline or shift to new regions.

Increasingly, negative impacts of climate change on agricultural production have preoccupied farmers and decision-makers across the world. The concern is increasingly shared by governments including those most hostile to the advancement of climate change mitigation.

Even the United States, which has opted out of the Paris Agreement , acknowledged at last year’s G7 summit that climate change was one of a number of threats to “our capacity to feed a growing population and needed to be taken into serious consideration”.

The UN median population projection suggests that the world population will reach some 10 billion in 2050. Between 2000 and 2010, roughly 66% of the daily energy intake per person, about 7,322 kilojoules, was derived from four key commodities: wheat, rice, coarse grains and oilseeds. However, the most recent UN report on food security and nutrition shows that world hunger is on the rise again and scientists believe this is due to climate change.
Agricultural production is significantly affected by climate change. This is because climate change and the implementation of a carbon mitigation policy have different effects on regions’ agricultural production and economy.
Recently, it has emerged that, regardless of the carbon policy scenarios, Sub-Saharan Africa will become the greatest importer of coarse grains, rice, soybeans and wheat by 2050. This significant change in Sub-Saharan Africa imports is driven by the fact that the largest increase in human population by 2050 will occur in this region, with a significant increase in food demand.

A recent report published by the European Commission about the challenges of global agriculture in a climate change context by 2050 highlights that
…emission mitigation measures (i.e. carbon pricing) have a negative impact on primary agricultural production […] across all models.
However, the report does not mention the technological costs to buffer (or adapt to) the effect of climate change on agriculture.
Changes in the agricultural system due to climate are inevitable. It is time to create a sense of urgency about our agricultural vulnerabilities to climate change, and begin seriously minimizing risk.

The Ghanaian Situation

Climate change is a global phenomenon. This means Ghana, like other countries of the world have to join in the collective fight to mitigate the often expansive effect of climate change.

In Ghana, the effects of climate change are becoming too obvious to miss. Irregular rain pattern and a consequent drop in crop yield are some of the signs that have confirmed the significant impact of climate change in Ghana.

But in a country where more than 60 per cent of farmers are illiterates, it will take some effort to drive home the need to give up certain traditional practices in favour of progressive best practices that have proven apt in many instances.

The Ghanaian media is an undeniable ally of the agriculture industry. At the height of the malignant galamsey menace that literally threatened the best of the country’s arable land, the media stood firm, pushed leadership to act and monitored progress to ensure that the wanton destruction of the Ghanaian environment was checked.

The important role played by the vibrant media make it an indispensable partner for the onslaught to mitigate the effects of climate change, particularly on agriculture.

The local agric industry is highly portentous, with a direct influence on the country’s GDP. This means that no effort should be spared if we will continually savour the monumental benefits derivable from agriculture.

As many current media footages portray, the menacing effect of climate change appears like a force in full swing.in Ghana we must be thankful that we have not suffered any climate induced mishap of national proportion. This should however spur us to put in place effectual policies and programs that will help improve the environment, while keeping potentially devastating effects of climate change at bay.

Agriculture represents more to Ghana than an industry. It is the lifeblood of Ghana and must therefore be protected from within and without. Currently, climate change has proven to be a threat that requires rapt attention, It therefore behooves on all agric- industry stakeholders, particularly the government to work collectively with others to ensure that agriculture is not swept into an abyss by the marauding wind of climate change.

While at it, we must also make effort to inculcate best practices from around the world that have proven efficacious. This way, we can lessen the effect of climate change and safeguard the local agriculture industry to ensure more jobs, food and a consequently boost the economy.