ALL AGRIC EXTENSION AGENTS ET AL IN ASHANTI NOW MOBILE

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Ashanti region experienced bumper crops harvest during the last farming season with the excess food exported to Togo, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast.

 The Regional Directorate of Agriculture has identified the Offinso and Ejura-Sekyedumase Municipalities as well as the Asante Akyem North district as the areas where the bumper harvest has been very pronounced and therefore become the main sources of export of the excess foodstuffs. 

The Ashanti Regional Director of Agric, Reverend John Manu made this known to the Ashanti Today in Kumasi on the sidelines of the handing over of 559 new motorbikes to Agric Extension Agents and their Supervisors working in the region. 

The motorbikes, which have been comprehensively insured, were procured by the Government of Ghana with funding from the Canadian Government as part of the Modernizing Agriculture in Ghana, MAG and Planting for Food and Jobs initiative.

With the number of motorbikes handed over, all Agric Extension Agents and their Supervisors in the Ashanti region are now mobile to get to farmers in the hard-to-reach communities. 

The Regional Agric Director noted, that with the interventions of Government, agric production which had almost collapsed, has been revived and that an effective implementation of the new programme has led to excess production in certain food crops. 

Reverend John Manu mentioned maize, citrus, plantain, ginger, banana and pawpaw as produce that were exported from Ejura, Offinso and Asante Akyem Agogo on almost weekly basis. He mentioned difficulties of the Extension Agents, who are the frontline agric officers in the dissemination of improved farming practices and agro inputs to the farmers, as the main challenge that has over the years  hindered progress in the sector.

 Rev. John Manu therefore entreated the Extension Agents and District directorate of Agric in the Ashanti region to use the motorbikes to improve on their performance by reaching farmers in every corner toward increased production level.

The Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah, disclosed that Government supported a total of 133 thousand, 152 small holder farmers in the region last year with production inputs under its flagship agricultural programme of Planting for Food and Jobs. 

These beneficiary farmers received highly subsidized inputs including certified planting seeds and agro chemicals. The Regional Minister however expressed discontent with the failure of participating farmers of the agric programme to repay the monies as agreed with the Ministry of Food and Agric for the subsidized inputs.

The Chairman of the Conference of District Directors of Agric, Madam Mary Gally, appealed to the government to resource all the 13 newly created Districts in the region with key logistics including vehicles to enable them to deliver on their mandate, especially in supervision.

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