The Farmer Resilient Package project enabled 277 farmers to transition to organic production, resulting in improved yields, expanded sales, and farm diversification, including the introduction of beekeeping alongside cashew cultivation.
‘I had no idea on the existence of this job until the trainer from So-B-Green came into our community and suggested to add beekeeping to my cashew farming.’, remembers Nyin Akua Mina. The cashew farmer, who was struggling with a very low income, was able to improve her livelihood through honey production.
‘We learned a lot of ways how to produce without chemicals and we were also given organic seedling which are very hard to get in Ghana,’ explains Benjamin Kofi, the owner of a vegetable farm who took part in the training. After being introduced to organic farming, he and other farmers founded a cooperative and started producing organically. A few months later, the farmer was able to employ two more young people on his farm.
By the end of the project in July 2022, a total of 832 farmers were trained in organic production and farm diversification methods. This led to the creation of 398 new good jobs both at So-B-Green Limited and at the cooperative level (including 156 for women, and 88 for youth between the ages of 15 and 25). Additionally, the project has also improved working conditions for 810 people, mainly in cooperatives.
To ensure sustainability, the project supported the registration of farmer cooperatives. By the end of the project, 6 cooperatives had been officially registered and were fully operational within the 3 supply chains. Interest in joining the cooperatives continued to grow, particularly among women in surrounding communities.
A private sector contribution of EUR 269,775.45 by So-B-Green was mobilised, facilitating the procurement of essential equipment like cold vans, the construction of nurseries for the Akuapem South Organic Farming Cooperative (ASOFCOM), and certification processes.
To implement this project, SO-B-GREEN Limited was supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in the context of Invest for Jobs on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) to build the capacities of its suppliers to enable them produce sustainably in the right quantity and quality for offtaking and processing.