As part of effort to empower farmers and address post-harvest losses in the country, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) has received the last consignment of the third tranche of agro machinery from Brazil.
The consignment, which cost the state US$30 million, is part of a US$96 million Brazilian loan facility to boost food production. The machines include 50 combine harvesters, 30 Massey Ferguson tractor, 70 Valtra tractor, 50 Hew Holland tractor, 57 LS Plus tractor, and rice mills.
The sector Minister, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, cutting ribbons to unveil the machines in Accra yesterday, said the farming equipment were acquired under the programme “More Food Programme” to improve food security and the livelihoods of farmers in the country.
He told media personnel after inspecting the equipment that there was more machines such as gari and plantain processors coming, in order to make the agriculture transformational agenda a reality.
“What you see here this morning is the last tranche of the third tranche of the facility worth US$30 million. The composition of the machinery, this time round, is slightly different. There’s more emphasis on harvest, post-harvest, and value addition,” he stated.
He noted that the acquisition of the machines was based on data gathered from farmers every year.
According to him, the machines formed an important component of the much-touted Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative, which was been ran on five modules.
He explained that Module ‘1’ of the PFJ was tailored towards addressing food security in the country through boosting the production of daily staples such as grain, vegetables, yam, plantain, maize, and cassava among others.
Similarly, the Minister said that Module ‘2’ of the programme had to do with tree crop diversification, where the country hoped to generates about US$12 billion from cashew, rubber, shea, oil palm, coconut and mangoes in the next decade.
Dr. Akoto said the Ministry had targeted to develop each of these selected tree crops for the next eight years to yield as much foreign exchange as cocoa was earning the country.
“Cocoa earns Ghana US$2 billion a year. We want each of these six crops to earn Ghana US$2 billion each in the next eight years. And that is the second module. We are not seeing much of it, only in 2020 September that the President launched the Tree Crop Development Authority in Kumasi with branches all over the country, depending upon where these crops are grown.
“They are still organising themselves. You won’t see the impact until the next five- six years. When these crops that we have selected will begin to yield production…”
The Minister further explained that the third module had to do with what was called Greenhouse Villages, which had sites at Dawhenya, Akumadan and Bodwease.
Under this module, about 200 Ghanaian students had been sent to Israel to receive training on greenhouse technology and how they would use the acquired knowledge to improve the country’s situation.
The fourth and fifth modules focus on livestock and farm machinery respectively.
Dr/ Akoto said Ghana has become the food basket of West Africa because of PFJ, since “Planting for Food and Jobs is not [just] about maize and rice… It is a whole range of activities that we have labelled as planting for food and jobs, and it is making agriculture, a transformational centre.”
The Director of Agriculture Engineering, A.K.B. Dengang, said the machines would be offered at a 40% percent discount to farmers. He urged interested farmers should apply through their districts and farmers’ associations.
The 2021 National Best Farmer, Alhaji Mashud Mohammed, thanked the Ministry for the intervention, as thousands of farmers were finding it challenging to access machines to tackle postharvest losses.
