Agrisolve together with other partners have embarked on a
farmers’ field day in the Sissala West District to inspect progress of crops
and reaffirm their commitment to the partnership for their mutual benefit.
The field day,
begun with a tour of the 3,000 acres of maize, 300 acres of soya bean, 10 acres
of rice, six acres of sesame and five acres of sorghum fields cultivated by the
Gohuoballe Agric and Business (GAB) Ventures; a group of farmers in the
district.
It was climaxed
with a short durbar with the enthusiastic farmers at the main farm site.
Speaking at the
durbar, Madam Elorm Goh, Executive Director of Agrisolve thanked the farmers
for their commitment to work towards the actualization of their dream of moving
from peasant farming to commercial farming.
Touching on the
genesis of the partnership, Madam Goh noted that the farmers had strong will
but lacked the capacity to produce desired quantities that would enable them
buy to serve the needs of industry.
She said it was
based on this that Agrisolve decided on a backward integration approach where
they would support hardworking farmer groups such as GAB Ventures to produce in
large quantities, some of the produce they needed to serve industry.
“The farmers need
support in terms of improved seed, fertilizer, technology and technical support
on best agronomic practices to enable them increase production, hence, the idea
behind the partnership to produce together and make sure all their produce
reach the market”, she said.
The Agrisolve
Executive Director noted that through the partnership, they have invested
heavily in technology to help increase production while reducing the
aggregation stress.
She said for three
years now, there had been progress, pointing out that last year recovery rate
was over 90 per cent.
Madam Goh bemoaned
some challenges hindering the sector including non-coordinated market
structures, lack of appropriate agriculture infrastructure, high cost of
transportation and bad roads to the Sissala area where a lot of farming was
going on.
She added that
agriculture was time bound and any delay of input to the farmer would affect
productivity and called for proper coordination of the fertilizer subsidy
policy to ensure easy access by farmers.
Mr Willian Kortey,
Managing Director of the Regional Marketing Group (RMG) noted that they
provided technical support to the farmers for them to get the best out of the
inputs they used.
“Any farmer doing
the right thing on the farm now can get over 40 bags of maize per acre”, he
said and added that once farmers improve their knowledge on best practices
through the technology they provided, they would keep making profit.
Kuoro Bamula
Basinjia Chieminah III, the Chief of Kandia appealed for more planters,
fertilizer application machines, combine harvesters, and continued farmer
education on new technology to help the farmer increase productivity with less
stress.
Mr John Dimah, Team
Leader of GAB Ventures appealed to the farmers to honour their commitments
immediately after harvesting to ensure a 100 per cent recovery rate so they
could continue to sustain the partnership between them and Agrisolve.
Other partner
organisations included Pure and Perfect, USAID-ADVANCE. Yara Ghana, and MTN.
GNA