USAID hands over power tillers to farmers
THE United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has handed over 19 power tillers to selected farmers of the Tono Irrigation Scheme in the Kassena Nankana Municipality in the Upper East Region.
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The power tillers are to support the beneficiary farmers who are engaged in rice and vegetable production to reduce the cost of land preparation, increase the acreage of land under cultivation and boost food production.
The tillers came with other accessories such as reapers and transplanters and were given to the farmers in the form of a grant. It is a collaboration between the USAID-Agricultural Transfer Technology (ATT) project and J.K.Technologies, dealers in small agricultural equipment.
Under the initiative, USAID-ATT project would provide 70 per cent of the cost of the facility while the beneficiary farmers would bear the cost of the remaining 30 per cent.
It is envisaged that the facilities would encourage the beneficiary farmers to adapt to the use of agricultural machinery to help boost production.
Ceremony
Addressing the beneficiaries, the acting Managing Director of the Irrigation Company of the Upper Region (ICOUR), Mr Sebastian Bagina, observed that the gesture would ultimately help to solve the problem associated with land preparation, which is one of the major challenges facing farmers in their bid to increase production.
Mr Bagina, therefore, entreated the farmers to take good care of the facilities to enable them to adopt mechanised farming on a sustainable basis.
The Grants Manager for Feed the Future ATT project, Mrs Blessing Kemakolam, said the International Fertiliser Development Centre (IFDC), was supporting the implementation of the ATT project to, among other objectives, increase production by between 10 and 20 per cent among the beneficiary farmers.
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"As beneficiaries, you can create jobs and increase your income levels as you support other farmers who did not benefit from the facility. Indeed we are happy we are putting smiles on the faces of farmers in this area," she further pointed out.
The Managing Director of J.K. Technologies and Enterprise Limited, Mr Gambhirsinh Chauhan, noted that farming was no longer subsistence but technological, hence farmers needed to take advantage of such interventions in their farming activities.
He explained that each power tiller was equipped with a 16-horsepower engine that was expected to undergo a lot of pressure without frequent breakdowns.
Mr Chauhan said the beneficiaries would be trained while the necessary spare parts would also be made available to enable farmers to maintain the facilities.
Beneficiaries
The Chairman of the Tono Farmers Association, Mr James Adawina, thanked the donors for the support and pledged on behalf of his colleagues to put the facilities to good use.
Two of the beneficiaries, Mr Bernard Wewoli and Madam Theresa Akumbawena, stated that the intervention would ultimately help to solve the challenges of transporting their harvests from their farms to the marketing centres.