The Farmers’ Organization Network in Ghana (FONG) is an apex body of small scale farmer and fisher based organizations in Ghana. It was established in 2003 with the vision to make farming an attractive business venture for small scale operators. FONG’s mission is to enable the formation of a network of small scale farmers and fisher based organizations in Ghana, to empower individuals and members in order to contribute to agriculture development, economic growth and sustainable use of natural resources. FONG is a member of the network of Peasant organizations and Producers in West Africa (ROPPA). Ghana is pursuing efforts to modernize the agricultural sector as agriculture is a vital contributor to economic growth, food security and poverty reduction. About 65% of the members of FONG are women. FONG, in collaboration with Collectif Strategies Alimentaires asbl (CSA), Belgium participated in a study entitled “Roles of Farmer Organizations in ECOWAS and UEMOA Countries – The Case of Ghana”. The study revealed numerous challenges faced by farmers in their farmer – led economic activities as well as their capacity building needs. The study established that, maize farmers were facing numerous challenges in their production activities. Notable among these were high post harvest loses, reliance on the sun for drying the crop, inadequate storage facilities, high cost of tauplin among others. Regarding maize marketing challenges, the farmers cannot take advantage of the following markets because they cannot produce to the required quality: World Food Programme, Ghana Grains Council and the School Feeding Programme. The proposed Maize Cluster Strengthening Programme provides post harvest efficiency training to 60 Maize FBO Cluster leaders. Furthermore the study identified among others record keeping and price negotiation as the most pressing training need in the area of production and marketing. The 60 FBO leaders engaged in maize production would also benefit from the Maize Cluster Strengthening Programme and be trained in record keeping and price negotiation. For sustainability of the training programme, each FBO leader trained would go back and train his FBO members within their communities. If each FBO leader trains 50 of his members supervised by FONG secretariat, a total of 3000 farmers would benefit from the training over time. As a result a total of 3000 farmers would benefit from this project. The overall objective of the project is three folded: reduce post harvest losses, increase bargaining power and improve the household food security.

Farmers Organization Network in Ghana (FONG) is a Network of farmer based organization established in 2003 as an Apex Body of farmers’ organization in Ghana. FONG was formed as a result of the follow-up workshop o the “World Food Summit” held in June 2002. FONG today has 72 member associations throughout the country (appr. 5.000 members). The main focus of the service delivery of FONG is in the field of training of its members, with special emphasis on women. FONG focuses on the strengthening of their members, like processing, access to credit or organizational strengthening. FONG has three zonal offices, i.e. one in the South, one in the middle and one in the North of the country In Ghana a large part of the population live in rural areas where the main source of livelihood is subsistence farming. The productivity, and for that matter, the income of these farmers have been woefully inadequate to make ends meet. The poor performance of the agricultural sector has been attributed basically to such factors as low skills of the farmers involved, inadequate access to extension services, lack of credit, absence of extra livelihood skills and use of obsolete equipment, among others. Any effort toward rural development logically has to rely on improving agricultural production and productivity. However, over the years support by governments to develop the agricultural sector has been adhoc, disjointed and unsustainable, and have failed to meet the development aspirations of the rural sector. Meeting the demand of the ever-growing population for food requires a sustained and holistic approach toward agriculture and rural development. There is therefore the need to develop the farmers’ skills, competence and thoughts to first perceive agriculture as a business venture rather than as a “way of life”. It is against this background that the project seeks to evolve holistic and sustainable approach to agriculture and rural development to take the farmers out of poverty.

FONG is one of the national apex organisations in Ghana and is relatively more concentrated on mixed community organisations for food production, on gender and on ecological sustainability. While developing its national structures, processes and lobby it is not neglecting the strong basis it has at grassroot. FONG therefore also wants to invest more in interlinking its members and in improving the initial capacity of its members PO's to link up to national programmes regarding marketing, extension and credit. They keep their strenght of mainstreaming ecological sustainability and gender at grassroot. FONG therefore proposes intervention in three areas: i. enhancing the development of basic farmers organizations and their members; ii. bridging the policy gap; iii.institutionalization of FONG. Activities on national and subnational level include (1) training and sensitization on management of credit, natural resource management, cooperative marketing, gender mainstreaming, and on lobby trajectories (2) interlinkages between members and with other actors, (3) institutional support to the national and zonal offices and to democratic planning, monitoring and evaluation processes.

FONG, Farmers Organisation Network in Ghana is a young organisation who wants to become a platform for farmers based organisations engaged in food security to participate, contribute, enhance and influence national development policies and programmes related to food security in Ghana.