Farmers in Afigya-Sekyere benefit from IFAD loan

Agona (Ashanti Region) 31 March '99

About 525 farmers in the Afigya-Sekyere district have since last year received a total of 422 million cedis as loans under the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) programme. Mr E. Asare Ampofo, Project Officer of Sekyere Rural Bank, which disbursed the loans, said the beneficiary farmers were those in the production, processing and marketing sectors of agriculture. Mr Ampofo, who was speaking at the opening of the Afigya-Sekyere district farmer's forum on the empowerment of the youth in agriculture at Agona on Monday, said the farmers were from 62 organised farming groups in the district. The Project Officer expressed the optimism that farmers would take full advantage of the package to expand their production levels. He asked them to do well to re-pay the loans for others to benefit from the facility. Mr Rexford Anokye, the District Chief Executive, suggested that, a mechanism should be adopted to guarantee prices for farm produce, as is the case with cocoa. The absence of guaranteed prices and a central marketing system for produce had given middlemen undue advantage to dictate prices, he observed. The government has, on its part, instituted incentive packages under the Village Infrastructure Project (VIP) and other financial packages to induce the youth to go into farming, Mr Anokye said. The DCE said what was now left was for chiefs to complement the efforts of the government by making the acquisition of land for farming less cumbersome.