Somanya, Dec.3, GNA-Mr Benjamin Adjetey Adjei, a 60-year-old man, from the Greater Accra was on Friday adjudged the overall best National Farmer for 2010 at this year's National Farmers Day Celebration held at Somanya. For his prize, he was allocated a three-bedroom house and presented with GHC 5,000, personal accident insurance cover, GHC 4000 personal life insurance cover, a trip to the United Kingdom and a decoder and viewing bouquet from DSTV.

The second prize award went to 41-year-old Maxwell Akadem, from Sandema in the Upper East Region and went home with a tractor and hallowing machine with GHC 4,000 personal life insurance cover. The third prize award went to Mr Eric Nii Doseh, a 47- year- old farmer, from Adaklu village in the Kwahu North District of Eastern Region, who went home with a double cabin pick-up and GHC 4,000 personal life insurance cover.

Addressing the well attended durbar, President John Evans Atta Mills assured that in order to ensure all year round food production, the government was subsidizing this year's farming season with 100,000 metric tones of fertilizer at an estimated cost of GHC 32 million. He said so far, 80 agriculture mechanization centres had been established under Public-Private Partnership Arrangement at the District level to increase the accessibility of mechanization services to majority of farmers who could not afford to produce and own their mechanized facilities. President Mills said the 2011 budget had made provision for the establishment of an Agricultural Development Fund to provide for up-scaling production, processing and value addition.

He also assured that the government would expand irrigation facilities, especially small- scale irrigation schemes to enable farmers own irrigation assets to ensure all-year round food production. President Mills said as a way of encouraging the youth to go into agriculture, the block farm component under the Youth in Agriculture of the National Youth Employment Programme had been implemented in six regions and urged the youth to take advantage of it.

He said in spite of all the efforts being made by Ghanaian framers, the nation spent about 500 million dollars on importation of foodstuff that could be produced locally.

President Mills said it was against that background that his government would ensure that importation of foodstuff becomes a thing of the past hence the many agricultural interventions in the 2011 budget.