"The challenges women farmers face is real especially now that the rainfall has started yet very few women have ploughed their farms and it will remain the same until most of the men have cultivated their lands and this will affect yields,she indicated.

"The men don't want to hear the women request for a tractor and we sometimes have the money, yet the men won't listen to us until they are done with their ploughing, and this is affecting our capacity to farm to meet the short rainfall pattern being experienced,she said.

Mrs Rosiya made the appeal in Tumu, during a one-day training for women farmers on the effective use and handling of agrochemicals.

She said considering the interest women had in farming lately, men needed to consider giving lands that were fertile to women to also plough and therefore, appealed to the Municipal Assembly and other organisations to support the women farmers with the provision of tractor services by dedicating tractors for the use of the women farmers.

"When we farm early, we harvest early and that helps us to take care of our family and other household chores," she explained.

Mr Haruna Dasmana, the Sissala East Municipal Plant Protection and Regulatory Services Officer, took the women through opportunities for small-holder women farmers for the 2023 production season and called on the women to take up agriculture as a business to enhance their incomes to bring better lives to their families by adopting the technologies the training offered.

He took the women farmers through the processing and preservation of fruits, fish, and vegetables and the processing and utilisation of soya.

He said the Sissala East Municipal Assembly was promoting Advance Nutrition that sought to build the capacity of over 20 women from 20 communities by incorporating soya into different meals.

Mr Dasmana said under the Ring 2 project, they were promoting hygienic handling protocols of vegetables and foodstuff by groups in soybean processing into Soya kebabs and soya milk as a way of improving household nutrition.

The rest were the Sustainable Soybean Production in Northern Ghana (SSPING/IITA)Savannah Investment Programme (SIP) Poultry layer birds with battery cages for women to enrich family nutrition.

The Ghana Agriculture Sector Investment Programme (GASIP) was responsible for the supply of Jab planters to female farmer groups to support Climate-Smart Agriculture and Modernising Agriculture in Ghana (MAG), which offered pieces of training in Good Agriculture Practices.

Mr Dasmana also took the women through how to choose a pesticide with low toxicity and the measures needed to lessen the potential of exposure including wearing personal protective equipment.

He advised them to avoid using cotton gloves or lightweight dust masks that may absorb the spray and increase contact with the skin.

Some agro-input dealers who attended the programme included Agrisolve and Lake Seeds products. It was organized by Action for Sustainable Development (ASUDEV) with support from ActionAid Ghana.