Training Forest and Farm Producers in Ghana

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In April 2022, Lifeworks Global trained representatives of 11 Forest and Farm Producer Organizations (FFPOs) from different agroecological zones in Ghana. All the organisations are members of the Ghana Federation of Forest and Farm Producers (GhaFFaP), which is a partner of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and is supported by the Forest and Farm Facility, a global partnership.

Following the lifeworks training, all FFPOs have completed trainings with farmers in their communities and established demonstration plots covering a range of crops (maize, cocoa, sweet potato, yams) suitable for the different agroecological zones. The organisations were drawn from Ghana’s three agroecological zones – the savannah, transition and forest zones. The partnership with Lifeworks aims to reach 2,525 farmers across 26 villages – with a projected 48% increase in income for those farmers trained due to crop yield increases of 120%.

The training is a good example of how Lifeworks partners with organisations that work with farmers. Lifeworks trains a group of ‘trainers’ chosen by its partner, in this case GhaFFaP, and these trainers then go on to train and support other farmers as they test and implement the use of microbial applications.

LWG has developed monitoring and evaluation forms to help farmers record data on soil health, crop health, crop yields and carbon sequestration – and this approach has been piloted their implementation across all FFPOs. Lifeworks also trained GhaFFaP representatives in soil health sampling and analysis. This project is part of a long-term partnership between GhaFFaP and Lifeworks – the aim is to scale up and train more FFPOs in the coming years.

GhaFFaP is a partner of the FAO, also supported by the Forest and Farm Facility, a global partnership involving FAO, ICUN, IIED and Agricord. It is a national federation of Forest and Farm Producer Organizations (FFPOs) and has a growing membership of over 1 million farmers. The FFPOs trained were: OFFC, WEDD, PADO, ASETENAPA, KOOKOO PA, ZOVFA, KANBAOCU, MAALTABA, SWIFA, HAIJA, and ABOFA.