Asiakwa, Dec. 9, GNA - A 47-year-old woman, Madam Comfort Laryea from Agyepomaa, won the best farmer award for the East Akyem District at the Farmers Day ceremony organized at Asiakwa. She was presented with a bicycle, a spraying machine, a sewing machine, a full piece GTP cloth, a pair of Wellington boots and two cutlasses.

A 35-year-old amputee, Kwame Owusu from Akyem-Adukrom, won the best disable farmer's award while the Asikam Presbyterian Junior High School (JHS) won the best school award. Seventeen other farmers, including three women were honoured for various categories at the celebration.

The District Chief Executive Mr Emmanuel Victor Asihene, congratulated the award winners and advised cocoa farmers whose crops had been infected by the swollen shoot disease to allow the trees to be cut down so that the disease would not affect other cocoa farms. The Chief of Asiakwa, Osabarima Agyeman III, urged the youth to desist from playing cards and other unprofitable deeds at the expense of working.

He told them that farming was no more a preserve of the old and urged the youth to take advantage of the enabling environment and go into farming to give them a sustainable livelihood.