Farmers attend capacity building workshop

The Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project (GCAP), in collaboration with the Agribusiness Unit of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), has organised a three-day capacity building workshop for members of the National Farmers and Fishermen Award Winners Association of Ghana (NFFAWAG) and grantees of the GCAP in Tamale.

The training was targeted at out-growers and nucleus farmers engaged in rice, soya and maize cultivation within the SADA enclave. 

The participants were taken through topics on agriculture value chain, basic appreciation of accounting, agribusiness financing and marketing as well as how to handle their produce after harvesting to ensure food security and minimise post-harvest losses. They were also taken through how to work safely on their farms and how to handle farming-related injuries such as cuts, snake bites and chemical injuries before going to the hospital to seek proper medical attention. 

300 Farmers

In all, about 300 farmers from the three northern regions benefited from the programme, which the participants described as beneficial and called for more of such training. 

Opening the workshop, the Director in charge of Agribusiness at MoFA, Mr Nicholas Neequaye, admonished the farmers to seize the opportunity to learn how to transform their farms into real businesses by applying whatever they would be taught.

The Director of Crop Services, Mr Asante Krobea, also admonished the farmers to always ensure that they bought quality seeds. 

According to him, good and quality seeds determined who a successful farmer was.

Farmers at the workshop

Mr Neequaye also informed the participants on  the commencement of  this year’s governments fertiliser subsidy programme and asked all farmers to register with their respective agric extension officers to benefit from the programme.

Contributions 

 The Chairman of the NFFAWAG, Mr Davies Korboe recounted the numerous contributions of agriculture to the national GDP, employment and income generation of the economy.

The Northern Regional Coordinator of the GCAP, Mr Blomfield Atippoe,challenged farmers to see farming as a business and adopt best practices and structures which would catapult their ventures into sustainable commercial farming. 

He also advised participants in the workshop to take the training seriously, which would serve as training of trainers for other farmers.

The workshop was closed with a field trip to  the  Savanna Agriculture Research Institute (SARI), where the farmers were given first hand training in best agricultural practices by Madam Glori Boakyewaa, a scientist with SARI. The farmers were also taught by Mr Stephen Djaba of Geo-Tech to use GPS application on their mobile phone to measure the actual size of their farms.