By: Catherine Ahiador
Mr. Samuel Kwadwo Somoah, Deputy Director of the Engineering Department of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, MOFA has on RITE FM’s Agrotech called on farmers to put in place strategies before stepping on their farms to work. According to him, farmers should not rush in cultivating big and large acres of land in order to seek praises but rather strategize and plan well.
That is not all; he equally called on farmers to take into consideration the amount of money they have as well as what they can make of it in order to properly manage it.
By doing this, farmers would feel relieved at the end of the harvest because their good strategies had yielded them good results.
Mr. Somoah noted that most people consider farming as an activity only meant for the poor, a situation he describes as unacceptable and unfortunate. To him, farming on the other hand requires the maximum attention in order to see its success, adding that it requires a lot of capital. ‘Money is an essential tool for every farmer…without money, farming becomes very difficult,’ he stated.
Mr. Somoah further indicated that Ghanaian farmers due to poverty use only the plough and the harrow, which are all good for farming but cannot play the role of all the needed machines which are absent on the farm.
According to him, there are more merchandised implements that determine the type of machine a particular farmer would use on his farm after it has carefully examined the land and soil texture on the farm. Unfortunately, he contends, our Ghanaian farmers use the inappropriate machine out of poverty, he lamented.
Mr. Samuel Kwadwo Somoah also emphasized that Farmer Based Organizations, (FBO)s must come together under one umbrella and work hand in hand as farmers so that when they request for assitance either from an (NGO) or the government , they won’t have any difficulties or challenges.
Source: ritefmonline.org
