2018 best farmers who returned from Morocco pledge to implement best practices
After a seven-day visit to Morocco, winners of the 2018 National Best Farmer awards are back, full of rich ideas and plans that can revolutionise agriculture in the country.
At least that is the sense I got after interacting with the leader of the group, who incidentally was the Runner-up in the 2018 National Best Farmer awards winner, Mr Alex Frimpong Tenkorang.
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For him, it was worth the while choosing Morocco for the educational trip put together by the National Scholarship Secretariat under the directive of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Eye-opener
The seven-day programme was an eye-opener for the farmers, most of who were travelling abroad for the first time and witnessing the application of sophisticated technology in farming and the agro value chain.
The educational tour was not just for the team to visit farms, agro processing companies and other agriculture value chain establishments, it was also to seek investment opportunities and partnerships as well as learn best practices.
And so it was not out of place when the team took the opportunity to sign memoranda of understanding (MoU) with four Moroccan companies in the agribusiness sector, and it is expected that those companies will be visiting Ghana to actualise the MoU by February, 2020.
Mr Tenkorang who is also the Executive Chairman of Kwanim Agric Ltd in the Afram Plains in the Eastern Region believes that the experiences gained during the tour were priceless game changers.
Best practices from Morocco
Asked why Morocco proved so critical, Mr Tenkorang said there was a lot to learn from Morocco because although it was almost a desert with very little farming land, with determination and focus, coupled with technology, that country now boasted being one of the best examples in terms of best agriculture practices and a module farmland.
He said what was amazing was the fact that in spite of the very little fertile lands that had seen farmers virtually tending crops on stones and rocks and yet proving successful, Ghana should be more hopeful as “the Moroccan experience gives a sense of satisfaction that we have all that it takes to make agriculture the game changer.”
For Mr Tenkorang, one of the fallouts of the trip will be the rollout of large scale organic farming, which until the tour, he thought could only be possible on a small scale. “Clearly, it was an eye-opener after the team was educated on organic farming, and it proved such a shocker that the practice was not widespread in Ghana,” he said.
Pressed to point out the one most important lesson he believed Ghanaian farmers should take a cue from, he pointed out that it should be the level of commitment of farm workers. “It is an area Ghanaian farmers need to look at critically,” he noted.
Additionally, he believed that Ghanaian farmers needed to up their game in the area of hygiene in farms, especially poultry, livestock and in the abattoir, describing their state in Morocco as second to none.
Game changer
Mr Tenkorang was grateful to President Akufo-Addo and the Minister of Food and Agriculture for deliberately championing agriculture in the country, positioning it as an attractive business and not just a pastime.
He said the move by the President was particularly crucial and relevant because Ghana was rich in farmland, water sources, human resource and generally a very good weather and that Ghana had no excuse to fail to feed herself and for export.
“Personally, I believe that for Ghana to be economically empowered, agriculture is the way to go because with agriculture, if you do it well, it is a sure way to food security,” he said.
He called on Ghanaians to make a genuine effort to really transform agriculture, and if that was done, then “we should be able to transform Ghana,” saying “after all, we have everything that makes agriculture tick.”
Scholarship
Mr Tenkorang praised the government’s vision for agriculture in the country, praising particularly the Scholarship Secretariat and the Minister of Food and Agriculture for their foresight which afforded the team the rare opportunity to gain such an exposure.
“After all, this is the first time since the inception of the National Best Farmers Day that farmers are given the opportunity not just to be opinion leaders in their communities and also afford their children to gain tertiary education but for the award winners to gain international exposure,” he said.
