"Farmers' Day Is A Waste Of National Resources" - Wayo

Farmers, day is celebrated in Ghana on the 1st Friday of every December. On farmers, day the best farmers are rewarded with; tractors, cars, farm equipments as well as home appliances. This is aimed at motivating farmers to work more.

However, political maverick and founder of the United Renaissance Party (URP), "Chucks" Kofi Wayo, has rubbished the celebration and described it as a ‘communist concept’.

Kofi Wayo, whose father was a farmer, told Citi Fm, it was "a waste of the nation's resources since these prizes could be used in investing and educating a lot of farmers."

“How many acres does these farmers have, does they have money to maintain these things, most farmers can’t even buy cutlasses,” he yelled.

The oil magnate and businessman, thinks farmers rather need help in education and investment other than these tractors which they cannot even maintain. He opines that the vehicles are of no use and rather the money be also used in buying cutlasses for them to improve their productivity.

“We should rather give them a lot of help, we don’t have commodity exchange, the farmers have no place to store their goods, and they lose all the time,” he stated.

He added that, most of the farmers lacked the basic technical knowhow in farming as such there was a need to educate them.

“They should put that money into educating the farmers and improving the productivity”, he added

The country will honour 65 distinguished farmers at the 25th edition of the annual National Farmers' Day being held at the Jubilee Park in Tamale on Friday. The farmers will receive awards in various categories, including livestock, fisheries, poultry and crops.

The day was instituted in 1984 for the country to appreciate the important role Ghanaian farmers play in the socio-economic development of the country.

Last year, the National Best Farmer award went to a 54-year old accountant and Managing Director of Bandoh Commercial Farms, Mr.Adjei Twum Bandoh, who received a house.