Rice farmers in Botanga get power tillers
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has handed over 16 power tillers to rice farmers in the Botanga Irrigation Scheme area in the Kumbungu District, Northern Region, to boost their production.
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Each of the tillers costs GHc22,000.
The provision of the power tillers, which is in the form of a grant, is a collaboration between the USAID-ATT Project and J. K. Technologies, dealers in small agricultural equipment. Under the initiative, the USAID-ATT Project will provide 70 per cent of the funding for the purchase of the equipment, while farmers pay 30 per cent.
Additionally, the tillers are meant to assist farmers in the Savanna Ecological Zone to adapt to the use of agricultural machinery to help boost production.
The power tillers come with other agricultural equipment such as reapers and transplanters to make rice production less laborious for farmers.
Speaking at the handing over ceremony at Botanga, the Chief of Party of the ATT project, Mr Mike Dockery said the initiative was part of the broader objective to assist farmers in the Savanna Ecological zone to adapt to new agricultural technologies to increase their yields, reduce poverty and ensure food security for the country.
He stated that aside the provision of the power tillers, the ATT project was also supporting farmers with highly improved seeds and modern agronomic practices to help increase the yields of farmers.
Support to smallholder farmers
Mr Dockery called on the beneficiaries who are mostly nucleus farmers to assist smallholder farmers within their catchment areas to plough and plant with the equipment they had received, adding that the aim of the initiative is also to assist smallholder farmers, who could not afford the 30 per cent funding for the purchase of the machine, to also have access to them .
He urged the farmers to use the equipment for the purpose it was provided to help Ghana attain food security.
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Appreciation
The Chief of Vogu and a member of the Council of State, Alhaji Mahama Bawa, on behalf of the beneficiaries, thanked the USAID-ATT project for the support to farmers in the Savanna zone which would go a long way to increase their yields, reduce poverty and ensure food sufficiency for the country.
The Dalung-Lanaa, a beneficiary and a rice farmer, expressed his gratitude to the USAID-ATT project for the technical support to farmers in the area which he said had translated into increased production.
According to him, the new agronomic practices introduced to rice farmers , especially in the area of fertilizer application, had boosted their production, adding that before the project, he could only harvest 30 bags of maxi rice bags from the three acres of land he had put under cultivation ,but with the new technologies, he is able to harvest 100 maxi bags of rice from the same three acre land.