1,000 Farmers receive 50,000 free oil palm seedlings under PERD programme
One thousand farmers in the Agona West Municipality in the Central Region have benefitted from the free distribution of 50,000 oil palm seedlings under the government’s Planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD) programme.
The distribution of the seedlings which is an initiative under the tree-crop module of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) is meant to create more employment, improve the country’s foreign exchange earnings and to facilitate development, particularly at the local level.
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The tree crop module of the PERD has been designed with a focus to develop selected tree crops, such as cashew, coffee, oil palm, coconut, mango and rubber, for export.
It is being implemented by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) in collaboration with the Local Government Ministry across the country.
Presentation ceremony
At a ceremony at the premises of the Municipal Directorate of the MOFA to present the seedlings to the registered farmers in Agona Swedru, the Municipal Chief Executive for Agona West, Mrs Justina Marigold Assan, said the move formed part of government’s plan to provide additional revenue to farmers to improve their welfare.
She said the government recognised the contributions of the agricultural sector to the growth of the economy and would, therefore, continue to pursue policies and programmes that would develop the sector for the benefit of the nation.
“The agricultural sector is the backbone of the country’s foreign exchange earnings and the government will continue to roll out interventions to increase the country’s earnings abroad,”she stressed.
One District One Factory
Mrs Assan said the programme was aimed at establishing a raw material base for local industries in the area, particularly an oil palm processing factory that would be under the government’s one district one factory (1D1F) programme in the municipality.
She added that “the municipal assembly is undertaking such an important venture so that oil palm will be abundantly available in a few years’ time to feed the factory to enable it to produce to full capacity”
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Mrs Assan, therefore, called on Ghanaians to change their perception that agriculture is the preserve of the uneducated, saying that “both educated and uneducated can venture into the agricultural sector which holds the key to the transformation of the country”.
Comparative advantage
The Municipal Director of MOFA, Mr Francis Christian Woode, indicated that the PERD programme was based on the comparative advantage of all Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) across the country.
He explained that the municipality’s comparative advantage was oil palm, hence the assembly’s decision to nurse 50,000 oil palm seedlings for onward distribution to the beneficiary farmers towards the realisation of the government’s vision.
He stressed that the programme had come to stay, and that farmers should seize the opportunity to increase their income levels through the PERD initiative to improve on their standard of living.
Mr Woode advised the farmers to employ the best farming practices to increase their yield and further warned them against not using the seedlings for the intended purpose.
Beneficiary farmers
In interviews with the Daily Graphic, some of the beneficiary farmers commended the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, for the policies and programmes he had initiated for the agricultural sector that had made the sector attractive in recent times.