Mechanization is critical to transforming agriculture by improving efficiency, increase crop yields, reduce reliance on human power, and facilitate precision farming.
To alleviate economic hardship and improve the livelihood of the farmers, the government under the leadership of H.E John Dramani Mahama has introduce an initiative called Farmer Services Centre that aims at providing mechanization services to farmers in the farming regions.
At the sod cutting ceremony at Takoratwene in the Kwahu Afram Plains South, the Minister for Food and Agriculture, Hon. Eric Opoku mentioned that the farmers services centre is agriculture transformation that seeks to improve farmers livelihood.
According to President, Minister said no farmer should be living in destitute. Farmers in European countries and Americas are the worthy ones, however, it is adverse in the part of our world.
To achieve this, Minister said the farmers should conform to the cooperative formation that will enhance farmers data gathering to enable easy access to credit facilities to expand their agriculture activities.
“We are collating the data of every farmer on our system, therefore, we urge every farmer to register in the system called Akuafo Anidaso to enable easy and equal distribution of services to our cherished farmers,” he added.
It is the aim of the government to establish the service centres across all the 271 agriculture districts in the country but in the meantime the government would be providing 50 services centres.
To fuel the efficient use of the service centre coupling with year round production, the government has set up 2 irrigation schemes at Afram Plains. Minister explained that one irrigation system at Kunadu would irrigate 900 hectares of farmland and by 7th to 9th month it should be ready to provide water for the farmers.
Moreover, to curb food glut and provide ready market for the farmers in the region, according to the Minister, the government in partnership with African Golden Foods, a UK company to put up a processing factory, to purchase the food crops that would be produced in the region for value addition.
He debunked the allegations of issuing permits for the importation of maize to the country and emphasized that the NDC government has not issued any permit to anyone to import maize into the country. However, it is the will of the government to purchase the locally produced maize to improve the livelihoods of the farmers.
“Due to the dry spell that occurred in 2024, the past government gave permits to some people to import maize to supplement the locally produced maize, upon the arrival some of these people are expecting the government to give them tax exemption to those goods but the government did not grant this exemption making the goods hoarded at the warehouses,” he explained.
He highlighted that the President has urged the Ministry of Education to purchase the egg gluts to feed the school children as part of school feeding programme. This became necessary when poultry farmers lamented of egg gluts collapsing their businesses.
