Some farmers at Piree, a community in the Nadowli-Kaleo district, have decried the high cost of farm inputs, particularly fertilizer, as the subsidised inputs model of the Planting for Food Jobs (PFJ) programme comes to an end.

The farmers told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that they waited for the subsidised farm inputs under the PFJ programme for this year’s cropping season to no avail and were compelled to resort to the open market for the inputs, which prices were exorbitant and beyond their reach.

Madam Jackeline Desmond, a farmer at Piree, said she could not afford even a bag of fertilizer for her maize farm due to the cost and that her hope of getting the subsidised PFJ fertilizer to buy had also been dashed.

“This year the price of fertilizer is too high, and we have also farmed maize and without fertilizer, they will not yield well. I don’t know what the Government is doing to us this year.

“If the Government can reduce the prices of the fertilizer for us to buy at least a bag to manage on our farms it would have helped us a lot,” she said.

The situation was not different for farmers at Dalanyiri, a predominantly farming community in the Wa West District, as farmers in that community were also lamenting the high cost of the fertilizer.

Madam Elizabeth David, a farmer at Dalanyiri, told the GNA that, “Now, when you farm without applying fertilizer you will not get anything from it but the fertilizer is also expensive. The Government fertilizer did not also come this year for us to buy.”

Currently, in the open market, 50kg bag of NPK fertilizer is sold between GH₵450.00 and GH₵500.00 while a 50Kg of Sulphate of Ammonia fertilizer is being sold between GH₵240.00 and GH₵300.00, while the cost of a tractor ploughing service is about GH₵250.00 per acre.

That meant bearing the cost of labour for the other activities and the cost of the seeds for planting, a farmer would have to spend between GH₵940.00 and GH₵1050.00 to cultivate an acre field of maize.

The Government, on August 28, 2023, launched phase II of the PFJ programme to substitute direct input subsidy with smart agricultural financial support in the form of comprehensive input credit with provision for in-kind payment.

Launching the programme at the University for Development Studies (UDS), Tamale, President Nana Akufo-Addo, said it was a five-year master plan for the transformation of agriculture in Ghana with a focus on modernisation through the development of a selected commodity value chain and active private sector participation.

Meanwhile, Dr. Godfred Seidu Jasaw, the Member of Parliament for the Wa East Constituency in the Upper West Region, had said the second phase of the programme would not be anything different from the first phase, which could not meet its target of providing jobs to the people.

On his part, Dr. Charles Nyaaba, the Executive Director of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG), said the successful implementation of the second phase of the PFJ programme would help solve the issue of food security in the country.

He said the guaranteed input credit for aggregators working with farmers was also the best approach to encouraging more youth into farming.