Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto
A GH¢287,000 Crop Aggregation Centre, built at Koradaso in the Dormaa Central Municipality, to support Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme, has been inaugurated.
The 500 metric tonne facility has been designed to use open and biomass dryers to reduce high moisture and high content of aflatoxins in maize.
It was constructed by AMPLIFIES Ghana project – a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food for Progress funded project, which aims at increasing the efficiencies of the feed value chain.
The five-year project is being implemented by a consortium – the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), the American Soybean Association (ASA), World Initiative for Soy in Human Health (WISHH) and a group of Universities led by Kansas State University.
Reverend Dr. William Yaw Brown, the Country Director, ADRA, said the storage facility would significantly help to reduce post-harvest losses.
It would go a long way to assist farmers to earn good returns from their production.
Already, the farmers had been taught how to properly dry and store their maize, he said.
He said the successful implementation of the PFJ would be a game changer – create wealth, improve food security and impact the economy.
The project had trained farmers in the area on how to properly dry and store maize.
Ligaya Diaz, the Chief of Party, AMPLIFIES Project (ASA/WISHH), said she was confident that the facility would motivate farmers in the area to increase productivity so that it would not become a ‘white elephant’.
She added that, through the PFJ, Ghana would have the capacity to grow maize to feed the people and cut down on food imports to boost the local economy.
Iddrisa Watara, the Municipal Chief Executive, announced that the government was constructing a-1,000 metric tonne warehouse in the area.
Additionally, 90,000 cashew seedlings and 126,000 coffee seedlings had been distributed to farmers under the Planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD) programme.
Augustine Ntow, a farmer at Koradaso, thanked ADRA and the project partners for the facility.
He appealed to the government to fix the Asenso Number One-Dwen-Koradaso and Dormaa-Ahenkro-Koradaso roads to make it easier for them to transport their farm produce to market centres.
He complained about the low price of maize, which he said, was affecting the farmers and called for standardized price to motivate them to increase productivity.
GNA