Improving Nutritional, Financial, and Family Stability Through Dry Season Vegetable Farming
Karaga is one of the districts in the northern region of Ghana which is made of predominately farmers. Both men and women engage in farming activities during the rainy season and do nothing during the dry season to earn money. Some take that period to prepare for the next season of farming while the ladies would move to the big cities for Kayaye business. For this and other reasons, Savannah Women Integrated Development Agency (SWIDA-GH) with funding from the World Food Programme (WFP) implemented a project in the Karaga district, Dry Season Vegetable Production to keep the women busy during the dry season so they can earn a living and also improve their nutrition.
Improving Nutrition in Nagumkpang through Dry Season Vegetable Production
Vegetables are known for their high content of vitamins and their fight against diseases. Doctors advised expectant mothers to consume a lot of vegetables as well as mothers with toddlers to do well and feed their babies with vegetables. Yussif Samata, a beneficiary of the Dry Season Vegetable Production in the Nagumkpang, Karaga recounts how the project has come to change her life and improve the health of her children The Dry Season Vegetable Production is a project implemented by the Savannah Women Integrated Development Agency (SWIDA-GH) with funding from the World Food Programme (WFP) in Karaga. This project entails training and providing women with seeds and the necessary resources to farm vegetables during the dry season. This enables them to improve their nutrition and livelihood.
For women like Samata, the project is helping them a lot to save costs in going to the Karaga township market for their vegetables for soup.
This has also saved her from removing money to buy vegetables to cook for her family.
A beneficiary of the Dry Season Vegetable Production, Yukubu Barikisu, narrates her
journey to financial stability through the Dry Season Vegetable Production and how it is
improving her life Barikisu was one of the women who responded to a call for a meeting in her community and
wrote her name for any potential benefit the meeting would bring. She was optimistic. When
the training was going on, Barikisu said some women in the community discouraged them
from participating in training and land preparation. But she refuses to listen to their negative
comment. She believes that whatever happens, she has nothing to lose. In the end, she will
gain knowledge of how to farm during the dry season.
As promised by SWIDA-GH, the women were provided with seedlings of different varieties of vegetables to farm and also given fertilizers. They were also given agriculture extension officers to come and look at the farm and talk to them about how they could improve their yield.
The Dry season vegetable Production according to Barikisu has helped her a lot to be
financially stable and she can help others unlike when she first arrived in this town and faced
a lot of hardship. Now, the story is different for her.
Improving family relations through Dry Season Vegetable Production
The Dry Season Vegetable Production in Karaga, a project implemented by Savannah Women Integrated Development Agency (SWIDA-GH) with funding from the World Food Programme (WFP) has seen one family as a model family for the community to emulate. Musah Abass, a community-based Agent in the Karaga district is helping his wife on the farm to cultivate vegetables for the upkeep of the family. The duo are complementing each other on the farm for the benefit of their young family. He sees the need to help his wife on the farm so that the workload would not be too much on her.
Realising the importance of the Dry season Vegetable Production to his family's well-being
Musah Abass identified a gap that his wife and other women face, water. They used to go to
the stream to fetch water which was far from their farm. With the help of his friends, they dug
five wells around the farm to help with watering the vegetables and making the work easy for
his wife.
For Musah, the Dry Season Vegetable Production is helping him and his wife a lot to take
care of their family and it has improved their living condition as compared to life before the
coming of SWIDA-GH to their community.
Musah Abass also talks of the importance of helping one’s spouse to improve their standard
of living and also as a learning point for their kids to emulate and other men in the
community as well.
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