Tumu Cooperative Credit Union supports input dealers to boost food production

Tumu Cooperative Credit Union (TCCU) headquartered at Tumu in the Sissala East Municipality of Upper West Region has expanded financing to agro-input dealers for onward sales to smallholder farmers, especially those in hard-to-reach communities to enhance production of crops such as maize, soy, and groundnut.

Training, technical assistance and pay-for-results incentives provided by USAID-supported Feed the Future Ghana Mobilizing Financing in Agriculture (MFA) Activity to 18 partner financial institutions, including TCCU, have enable them to increase lending to the agricultural sector.

TCCU Project Manager, Abass Yussif, said, “Training and technical assistance from MFA enabled us to refine our existing financial products and develop new products to meet the financing needs of target value chain actors. Our new agro-inputs financing product, for example, ensures timely financing disbursements to input dealers to both stock and distribute seed and fertilizer to farmers ahead of the farming season allowing them to better plan production.”

Thirty-two-year-old Kyeyira Iddrisu sells seeds, fertilizer, agro-chemicals, and other agricultural inputs to smallholder farmers in a small town of Gwollu in the country’s Sissala West District, Upper West Region. After graduating from high school in 2016, Iddrisu, who had been helping his father on his farm, started his own five-acre maize, soybean, and groundnut farm.

Three years later, realizing how difficult it was for farmers in his community to access seeds and fertilizer on time and in the right quantity, Iddrisu opened his shop, Nyanmawaro Enterprise, after raising about GH¢897 (about $120) from the sale of his crops to buy seeds and borrowing 50 bags of fertilizer from a large input dealer.

A farmer could travel over 30 kilometers (almost 19 miles) to Tumu or 127 kilometers (about 79 miles) to Wa (towns in northern Ghana) just to buy a few kilos of seed and a bag of fertilizer. I set up the business to bring inputs closer to smallholder farmers in the community and to provide these on credit because most farmers cannot afford to pay cash,” Iddrisu said.

Inputs include maize and soybean seeds, fertilizers, weedicides, pesticides and fungicides. The farmers then repaid the input credit with produce at harvest time. Iddrisu stored and later sold this to aggregators (agribusinesses who buy produce from smallholder farmers for sale regionally and nationally) in the dry season when prices have increased.

Business was brisk so Iddrisu looked for financing to increase his seed and fertilizer stock to meet demand of more than 100 smallholder farmers during the 2021 production season. He applied for and received a GH¢80,000 approximately $10,700 loan from the Tumu Cooperative Credit Union (TCCU), one of 18 partner financial institutions of MFA. MFA works to make financing more accessible to farmers and agribusinesses in Ghana so they can boost production, invest in processing, and expand their businesses.

On the other hand, Alhassan Kanyan is a 25-year-old smallholder farmer who accessed inputs on credit from Iddrisu. “The availability of seed and fertilizer on credit in my community helped me to increase my yield from nine bags of maize per acre to 17 bags per acre in 2021,” he said.

I was able to repay my input credit and sold the excess maize to purchase a tricycle to transport inputs and produce for farmers for a fee. I have seen how rewarding farming is, so I will increase my farm size from five to 10 acres in the coming season,” Kanyan added.

Like Kanyan, Iddrisu was also able to repay his first loan to TCCU and secured a second one to provide input credit to another 500 registered smallholder farmers–35 percent of whom are women–to produce maize in 2022. “Financing from TCCU has helped me to expand my business and grow my customer base. To continue receiving the financing I need to expand my business, all I have to do is work hard and repay my loans on time,” Iddrisu added.

Kyeyira Iddrisu, a beneficiary of TCCu, who used financing to expand his agro-inputs business

Alhassan Kanyan, a smallholder farmer in Gwollu (left) buys agrro-inputs
from Kyeyira Iddrisu, a dealer supported by TCCU.