Vice President presents house to best farmer

Ngleshie Amanfro (G/A), Nov. 14, GNA - Vice President Aliu Mahama on Friday presented the keys and title deeds of a 300-million cedis three-bedroom house to Mr Abudu Takora, the 2002 National Best Farmer, as his first prize award.

The Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) financed the construction of the fully furnished house, located at Ngleshie Amanfro in the Ga District.

Mr Takora selected the site.

Making the presentation, Vice President Mahama commended the farmer for his hard work and expressed the hope that the donation would inspire the youth to go into farming.

Medium Dwelling Company, an estate management and developers firm, constructed the house, which has a garage, kitchen with water and electricity supply.

The 63-year-old farmer from Upper Denkyira in the Central Region has 160 hectares of food crop, livestock and a cash crop farm.

Mr Takora has four wives and 34 children.

Mr Paul Koranteng, Chairman of the Board of Directors of ADB, said the Bank had pledged for the third time to continue its sponsorship for this year's award.

He said the Bank had challenged Ghanaian entrepreneurs, who wanted to go into agribusiness to come up with concrete proposals for consideration, adding that, it was ready to implement the proposals together with them once the they were good.

He said for the Bank to be in the position to complement Government's policy initiatives, especially in the provision of micro-finance and promotion of agribusiness, it was obvious that ADB would have to be in the position to receive more resources, preferably from official sources given the rather high risk nature of the business of the agricultural financing.

"We, therefore, appeal to the Government to consider ways of helping the Bank to face the challenge and to manage the situation', he said.

He said ADB was also looking at the possibility of providing a lead role in the development of an effective and buoyant micro-finance segment of the spectrum in line with the Bank's mission of providing financial intermediation for a sustained and diversified agriculture and rural development as a foundation for Ghana's over all economic take-off. He said ADB was concerned about the large-scale number of micro to small- scale farmers and fishermen, who under normal circumstances were unable to access credit from the mainstream banking institutions and were, therefore, left to the mercy of moneylenders.

Major Courage Quashigah (rtd), Minister of Food and Agriculture, said the occasion of the National Farmers' Day since it was instituted had generated a competitive spirit among farmers and fishermen and serve as an inspiration to the youth to go into agriculture.

He said agriculture was not attractive to the youth who had a strong drive for making money, adding, the situation had gone beyond rural-urban migration to national brain drain to the Western World.

"To contain the situation we are determined to push hard our agribusiness drive, therefore, we must help individuals, especially our youth, to see the wealth in the soil', he said.

Major Quashigah said it was high time affordable alternatives were given to farmers to relieve them of the old practice of farming using back breaking hoes and cutlasses.

He said the Government would keep faith with farmers and fishermen and would also keep on demonstrating its commitment to making agriculture attractive to all.

It is in the spirit of improving the lot of farmers that the Government recently increased the purchasing price of cocoa to 69 per cent of freight on board price, he noted.