Ghana Agricultural and Rural Development Journalists Association (GARDJA), a newly formed professional media body – with the overarching purpose of mobilizing and organizing journalists and media organizations involved/or interested in agricultural, environmental and rural development issues to come together and share perspectives, would like to announce to the public the formal inauguration of the association.
The event is scheduled for Wednesday, June 1, 2016 at 9:00 am at Noda Hotel at Fumesua, under the theme: “Improving Agricultural Financing for the Smallholder Farmer in Ghana.” The theme provides an excellent opportunity for the nation to learn about ways to reduce poverty and improve agricultural production. Prof. Amin Alhassan, Dean of the Agribusiness and Communication Sciences Faculty at the University for Development Studies, will deliver the keynote address.
We are thrilled to offer the platform for discussions on agricultural issues because Ghana’s economy remains agrarian in nature, employing more than 44 percent of the working population.
Yet agriculture is still characterised by the use of very simple traditional tools for production, which accounts for the low level productivity in the sector. Production is also at the vagaries of the weather, which means the food crop sector relies on rainfall alone, aside being a large scale peasant-based farming.
Our food crop farmers often face the problems of price instability and poor marketing of their farm produce. There is also an absence of guaranteed price that creates instability in the income of farmers.
It is on the basis of these problems among a myriad of challenges facing the agric sector that in the mid 2014, we decided to formalize the network of journalists interested in agricultural issues by registering it into an Association to help sharpen the skills of the media practitioners for this kind of speciality in the media.
It is aimed at supporting the journalists involved to professionally work to inform the various publics about the need to give special attention to the sector for agriculture to be used as the springboard for economic freedom as a country in the tropical region.
Signed
Ernest Kofi Adu
(General Secretary)
