A Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture, Kennedy Osei Nyarko has called for active private sector participation in extension service delivery.
According to him, the ratio of extension officers to farmers is woefully inadequate and must be looked at critically.
As at 2017, there were only 1,600 extension officers to provide assistance to the thousands of farmers across the country.
Statistics from the Agriculture Ministry shows that the ratio of farmers to extension officers is currently one to 3,000.
The Agriculture Ministry last year announced that Government has recruited 2,700 Extension Officers to provide extension services to farmers across the country.
Despite this intervention from the ministry, Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture, Kennedy Osei Nyarko called for more participation from the private sector as the ratio is woefully inadequate.
“Currently in Ghana the extension to a farmer ratio is around one extension agent to 3,000 farmers”, he bemoaned.
He said this when a programme was organised by Solidaridad, a global network organisation and Civil Society Organisation which promotes sustainable development through interventions that impact agricultural supply chains, climate resilience and national economic development and on the theme “Agriculture service provision: A critical driver for sector transformation.”
Delivering his address, the Netherlands ambassador to Ghana, Ron Strikker said his outfit is supporting the initiatives with 25 million dollars to grow the Agriculture sector.
“We have spent 20 million Euros on both programmes and we are going to do 25million more for the next phase”, he assured.
Sustainable West Africa Palm oil Programme (SWAPP) II is a sequel to the first phase of SWAPP which run from 2012 to 2016.
SWAPP II is centred on the large-scale adoption of the sustainable intensification of oil palm cultivation and the processing of Fresh Fruit Bunches(FFB) through active private sector participation.
The objective of the Cocoa Rehabilitation and Intensification Programme (CORIP) II is to speed and scale up the creation of SMESs within the cocoa supply chain to deliver market-based services to farmers.
–
By: Jessica Ayorkor Aryee/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana