Kenyasi (B/A), Aug. 4, GNA - Newmont Ahafo Project had initiated a programme under the Ahafo Agro-Business Growth Initiative(AAGI), to help small- scale farmers in the eight communities within their project area to produce for local and international markets.

Under the project, the company had organized over 3,000 small- scale farmers into 196 Farmer Based Organizations (EBOs) and improved their capacity to be able to produce agricultural products to meet international market standards.

This was disclosed by Mr Agbeko Kwame Azumah, Communication Manager of the Newmont Ahafo Mines, when he met with members of the Journalists for Business Advocates (JBA), who were on tour of the mines.

He said the main aim of the project was to help small- scale farmers i= n the beneficiary communities to improve upon their earnings and standard of living, through improved production to meet international standards and connecting them to both local and international markets.

Mr Azumah said as at 2010, farmers engaged under the project were able to export 78,000 kilograms of plantain, 86,000 kilograms of chili pepper, 105 kilograms of ginger and 14,000 kilograms of soya beans to markets in Europe.

The communities, which had benefitted from the project, include Kenyas= i number one and two, Hwidiem, Wanahinso, Gyedu, Ntotroso, Nkaseim and Nkrankrom.

He said Newmont was working on the project in collaboration with the Asutifi District Assembly, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) and the Export Development and Investment Fund (EDIF).

Mr Azumah said as part of the project, EDIF was providing the project with 160,000 US Dollars for the acquisition of irrigation equipment, processing equipment and the construction of a processing and storage centre.

He said so far Newmont had invested one million US dollars into the project and had engaged the services of African Connection Ghana Limited, t= o implement the project on its behalf.

Mr Azumah explained that, some of the challenges facing the project were the difficulty of the farmers to quickly adapt to the new ways of farming to meet the demands of the international community and abandoning some of the crops they were used to producing in place of non-traditional export crops.