Rice farmers cultivating at the Weta irrigated field in the Volta Region have called on the government for support to enable them to reclaim the hectares of irrigable lands has been submerged.
The farmers spoke to the officers from the National Commission for Civic Education in the Ketu North Municipal Directorate when they visited Avalavi Rice Farm.
According to Seth Amamu, a farmer and machine operator at Avalavi Rice Farm, nearly a quarter of the irrigated area allocated to the farmers has been submerged for some years now, causing farmers to lose millions of Cedis each year.
The farmers have tried helplessly to reclaim the land by their collective effort but to no avail, hence the call on the government, especially Ghana Irrigation Authority to intervene.
The government’s intervention they said would help them contribute more effectively to avert the looming food insecurity in Ghana.
According to the farmers, they cannot work for the water to keep flooding their farms. “Human nor combine harvesters cannot go onto the field to work, the land is too swampy, and we are losing all our produce”, they cried out.
The youth in the Weta and its environs expressed interest in agriculture to the Ketu North NCCE Officers, hence beseeched the government to intervene to make the lands proactive for cultivation.
Some of the farmers also complained bitterly to NCCE officers about the high cost of fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides, hindering the production of other crops.
The Weta irrigation project owned by the government of Ghana was constructed by the Chinese in June 1982. The field is being cultivated mostly by women.
