Gbeogo (U/E) Jan. 7, GNA - Farmers in parts of the Upper East Region who took advantage of the receding flood water to plant water melon; maize, onion, tomatoes and other vegetables are expecting a good harvest. "None of the crops failed and those who have started harvesting attest that they have never had more produce, especially with water melon that can be seen in heaps all over the place," Mr Roy Ayariga, Regional Director of Agriculture, said.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at the weekend during a tour of some dry season farms at Gbeogo, in the Talensi-Nabdam District, Mr Ayariga said the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) encouraged the farmers in October 2007 to use the wet valleys and rivers to do dry season gardening so they could support themselves after they had lost all they owned in the floods.

He said MOFA supported the farmers with water pumps and other incentives and while some cropped in the low valleys that still had receding water of the floods; others were given pumps to use water from the White Volta and other rivers to irrigate their crops. He said some of the farmers, who could not afford the fees of the Irrigation Company of the Upper Region (ICOUR) because they lost their property in the floods, were making good use of the rivers. Mr Ayariga expressed regret that farmers in the Bongo District, who could have used water from the Red Volta River to farm, were sacked from the fertile lands by the Forestry Department because the bare land was said to be part of a forest reserve.

He suggested that the Forestry Department could rather give the farmers seedlings of fast growing trees to plant on that land while they cropped it so that when the trees grew, the farmers would then quit, leaving a forest and not the bare land that it was at presently. He said farmers and traders had started loading trucks of onion, which sold at GH=A2 60 per maxi-bag and water melon that sold at between 10 pesewas and 50 pesewas depending on its size.