Farmers call for early disbursement of funds from MDA

Mpraeso, Aug. 20, GNA - Over 80 farmers in Kwahu South District have called for early disbursement of funds from the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) to rehabilitate and expand their farms to increase food production in the district.

The farmers cultivating vegetables, food crops, black pepper, tiger nuts, pineapple, poultry farmers and grass cutter farming made the call at a meeting with stakeholders from MiDA at Mpraeso at the weekend. They contended that since the district was among the 23 selected districts to benefit from the fund, they had expanded their farms with the hope to receive financial assistance.

According to the farmers, the funds would be used to purchase inputs and hire labourers to maintain their farms to increase production with the approach of the major farming season. Mr Samuel Arku-Kelly, Afram Plains Zonal Agricultural Manager of MiDA, said the first instalment of 52 million dollars out of the 547 million dollars from Millennium Challenge Accounts had been received.

He said the rest would be released annually for the next five years. Mr Arku-Kelly said start up programmes such as identification, sensitization and training for farmers would be completed soon for the disbursement of the funds.

He said 600 out of 1,200 farmers who would benefit from the funds in the 23 districts were from the Afram Zonal basin and they would be trained to strengthen their business capacity to be business oriented. Mr Arku-Kelly said other training programmes were, business planning for the banks to know the kind of assistance to be given to the farmers and technical training to help improve farming methods and acquisition of irrigation machines and storage facilities.

He said the programme had been designed for economic growth and poverty reduction through agriculture transformation for private enterprises and urged the farmers to adopt the rules and regulations governing the fund to enable them receive the needed assistance. Mr Arku-Kelly said an implementing entity agreement would be signed soon between MiDA and Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) for staff of MOFA to identify and prepare farmers for the project.

Mr John Nketia Gyenfie, Kwahu South District Director of Agriculture, gave the assurance that staff of MOFA were prepared to organize the needed training for them to qualify to access the funds. Mr Christopher Ofosu, Kwahu South District Planning Officer, advised the farmers to organize themselves into groups and open accounts at the selected banks to benefit from the fund.