GTLC schools farmers on best production practices

The Ghana Trade and Livelihood Coalition (GTLC), a trade and agriculture advocacy organization has organized a 2-day trainer of trainers’ workshops for 150 farmers in five districts as part of its entrepreneurial skills development.

The training was aimed at empowering small holder farmers to be able to identify and utilize their innate skills and competencies while responding appropriately to government policy initiatives in the agriculture sector.

Participants were taken through practices along the production chain drawing critical relationship between current practices and what ought to be the best practice in order to achieve maximum yields and returns from their investments.

The 10-day training centered on effective planning, use of certified seeds, timely acquisition of and appropriate application of fertilizer and chemicals as well as other inputs, staking in the case of tomato, harvesting and packaging in the case of rice.

According to the Coordinator of the Coalition, Ibrahim Akalbila, effective planning is viewed as a process that guarantees the deployment of scarce resources at areas where they are most needed.

While committing to collective engagement with public and private sector institutions in an effort to improve their farming operations, participants also committed to doing a number of things that are within their ambit to ensure that yields and quality of their produce are progressively enhanced and ultimately attract good market over time.

The exercise revealed staggering defects with regards to farmers’ knowledge of their farm sizes. Among participants, a microcosm of the farmer population of Ghana, a whopping figure of about 90% of the participants did not know their actual land sizes.

For instance, Mr. Mensah Adusei of the Derma tomato cluster, said a purported 28 acres piece of land which was sold to him later turned out to be 13.5 acres when it was measured by the use of a global positioning system.

Mr. Akalbila said inappropriate land size had implication for cost of production, application of inputs as well as quality and market of the produce. Participants were therefore encouraged to ensure that each participant was able to know his/her land size before the next farming season.