The Adventist Development and Relief Agency Ghana (ADRA) has trained about 722 volunteer extension farmers, adding to the few in the country to assist farmers improve on their production.

ADRA said it will train more extension officers to enhance the capacity of farmers to produce quality crops that meet the market’s demand.

The northern sector produces the majority of the country’s food-stuff, but lacks extension officers to supervise agricultural practices as well as assist farmers identify the right time to cultivate particular crops that will yield well to improve their daily income.

These extension officers will also assist farmers with application of fertiliser on their crops.

The project is dubbed ‘The Volunteer Extension Workers Programme’, and is expected to facilitate agricultural extension service delivery in areas where professionally trained extension workers are scarce.

The three-year project is being implemented by ADRA-Ghana under the Integrated Agricultural Productivity Improvement and Marketing Project (INTAPIMP) through the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), with funding from DANIDA and the Rockefeller Foundation.

INTAPIMP is a project that complements the agricultural value chain mentorship project (AVCMP) to achieve the targetted coverage and goals of the DANIDA-funded agricultural value chain facility (AVCF).

ADRA also trained artisans to help design structures for the farmers to store their farm produce, to avoid theft as well as exposure to weather conditions that destroy them.

In a bid to mitigate some of the farmers’ challenges, ADRA has also collaborated with Sinapi Aba, a financial institution, to assist some farmers to acquire tractors.

Sinapi Aba provided a GH?40,000 loan to various farmers to enable them acquire inputs to aid their production.

Mr. Isaac Kankam Boadu, the Project Manager for INTAPIMP, told the B&FT that agricultural extension agents in the region continue to dwindle because of government’s inability to recruit new ones as well as build the capacity of those existing -- and this affects farmers’ produce.

He said INTAPIMP saw the need to venture into training extension officers to ease the pressure on the few agents on the ground in the norther sector.

He stressed that the organisation this year is focused on assisting more women who show commitment to agricultural production in the region.

He said the project is the first AGRA-funded integrated grant project to provide training and technical support to farmer-based organisations (FBOs), agro-dealers and SMEs by a single organisation.

“INTAPIMP is part of a AVCF project, and as a component of the Danish Support to Private Sector Development - Phase II (SPSD II) is targetting 50,000 smallholder staple crops farmers (30,000 directly and 20,000 indirectly) to cultivate maize, soya beans, rice and groundnuts,” he stated.

According to him, a total of 11,404 farmers and 394 FBOs are benefitting from the project to cultivate rice, soybean, groundnut and maize.

He encouraged the youth to venture into agricultural business, which is now receiving funds from agencies to produce more for export -- saying the sector has many potentials that if well-tapped could help adress the economic crisis as well reduce the unemployment rate.

He stressed that the organisation will soon extend its support to poultry farmers so as to build their capacity in producing quality birds for consumption.