About 200,000 farmers from Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions are to benefit from a training and sensitisation programme on best agricultural practices including proper fertiliser application.

The beneficiaries will also be trained on farm productivity practices such as the selection of the right seed, the right fertiliser for the right crop at the right application rate and the right time - the alright approach.

Sixty farming communities have been selected for the exercise in the three regions for the 2013 cropping season, but nine communities in the Upper East Region with an average farmer turnout of 60 per cent farmers per community have already benefited from the training.

This was contained in a statement issued in Tamale by Mr Medhi Saint Andre, Managing Director of YARA Ghana, and copied to Ghana News Agency.

It said the training programme was necessitated by the fact that nearly 70 per cent of the workforce in the north engages in agriculture but had low productivity as a result of insufficient agricultural knowledge and inputs.

“Experimental evidence further shows clearly that poor soil fertility coupled with low fertiliser application is to blame for this low productivity…that is why YARA Ghana, the largest fertiliser company in the country has found it expedient to embark on a sensitisation campaign to train farmers and other stakeholders on the proper use and application of fertilisers,” the statement said.

It noted that government’s fertiliser subsidy programme introduced in 2008 was appropriate, saying it would enable farmers to increase the rate of fertiliser application as a means of increasing crop productivity.

The statement called for a closer collaboration among actors in the agriculture sector and to support the efforts of government in extending agricultural technological know-how to the farmers who need it most.

YARA is one of the leading producers and marketer of mineral fertilisers since its establishment in Ghana in 2007 and continue to strengthen the quality and depth of input supply and related services along agricultural value chains to increase the productivity of farmers.