Permaculture Agriculture in Ghana - Sustainable Value Chains

The project aims to improve the economic well-being of farmers in the target regions of Ghana through the socio-ecologically sustainable approach of permaculture.
The focus is on smallholder farmers, women and youth - as particularly disadvantaged groups.
The agricultural sector is one of the most important economic sectors in Ghana. Conventional agriculture causes long-term ecological problems, such as soil erosion and infertility. Government programmes for poverty reduction and agricultural development hardly reach all vulnerable target groups. 
The main problem for farmers is the lack of access to local and international markets. They are often unable to meet international trade requirements for minimum quantities and quality of agricultural products due to poor soil quality and lack of expertise. There is a fundamental lack of access to agricultural and economic knowledge and a processing and logistics infrastructure.
Through regenerative land use, mixed crops for self-sufficiency and processing into high-quality products, as well as cooperative marketing, the quality of life in the rural areas of the target regions is to be sustainably improved.
SONED has been working with the Ghana Permaculture Institute (GPI) since 2012. From 2014 - 2018, the project "Poverty Reduction through Sustainable Development in Ghana" was implemented and the establishment of a developmental school partnership of the GPI with the Kreuzberg School for Adult Education (SfE) was supported.
In the new project, the sustainable development approach is to be consolidated and further developed from 2022-2025. To this end, the GPI's existing agribusiness structure is to be improved and the range of educational opportunities expanded.  Income opportunities for the target groups will be diversified, processing and marketing capacities will be increased and improved, biodiversity and soil fertility will be preserved and the resilience of the target groups will be increased.
A number of targeted measures are planned for this purpose. These include education formats tailored to farmers, investments in sustainable infrastructure, stakeholder building and measures to increase media attention and thus value creation. Local resources are used to respect and promote farmers' self-sufficiency.
The project targets people from 4 regions of Ghana: Bono East (41 communities), Brong Ahafo (31 communities), Upper West (15 communities) and Northern Region (19 communities) whose main occupation is agriculture. 2,250 people will benefit directly from the project through participation in training, and 1,647 households and 15,000 individuals will benefit indirectly from the project through increased production and market expansion.