Vegetable crop farmers of Nkurakan near Koforidua in the Eastern Region are complaining bitterly and expressing their views and opinions that the high cost of fertilizer is affecting their farming activities.
Mr Daniel Aku Ozor, a vegetable crop farmer of Nkurakan in an interview told Rite Fm that the high cost of fertilizer was a major problem affecting the vegetable crop farmers.
He said the inordinately high cost of fertilizer has curtailed farmers into reducing the size of their farmlands as they are not able to afford the fertilizer needed to cultivate large acres of land. He also lamented that government was no longer adding subsidy to fertilizer in order to reduce cost to enable them purchase the fertilizer.
He stated emphatically that another challenge facing them as vegetable crop farmers had to do with irrigation. He said due to the low levels of rainfall this season, they have resorted to irrigation as their only means of water supply to their crops.
He said per this method, there was the need for water pumping machines, fuel, among others; ‘but all these come at a cost,” he added. He thus called on the government to provide them with subsidized fertilizer, boreholes and the supply of water pumping machines to be paid on installment basis to enable them afford the cost of the materials so as to enhance their farming activities.
Meanwhile, Rite News spoke to the Director General, Mr. Samuel Somuah of the Adaptive Trust Station, formerly Agric Mechanization Center, on the measure to supply an irrigation scheme to farmers. He said that in order to ensure the supply this, there are certain factors that need to be considered such as the water pot of the land, whether the water pot is also potential to support farming activities and also whether the underground water contains salt and other chemical substances that could destroy crop plants among others.
Source: ritefmonline.org
