The Assembly Member for the Gbache Electoral Area in the Wa West District, Mr. Peter Seidu Kaadaare, has appealed to the district agricultural directorate to provide extension services for farmers in the Electoral Area as rains set in.
That, he said, would enable them to improve on their farming activities, noting that the lack of those services for both crop and livestock farmers was adversely affecting them.
Mr. Kaadaare noted that farming was technical and therefore needed expert advice on appropriate ways of farming, but that farmers at Salmana and Gbache communities in the area could not get that advice.
“About 90 per cent of the people in my electoral area are farmers, when it is time to farm, how to get an extension officer to advise the farmers is difficult.
“The farmers always need training on how to prepare organic manure but the officers are not there to train them”, he explained.
He noted that aside extension advice on Good Agronomic Practices (GAPs), livestock farmers also lacked regular veterinary services, which was affecting their activities.
“There is a certain man at Salmana who has about 700 cattle and there are others who also rear sheep and goats, but because they don’t vaccinate the animals, sometimes they die when diseases attack them”, Mr Kaadaare added.
Although the government launched the Rearing for Food and Jobs programme in 2019 to promote livestock farming among Ghanaians as part of efforts to provide jobs for the people, access to veterinary services, particularly at the rural level remained a serious challenge to farmers.
Talking on the One-Village-One-Dam (1V1D) project, Mr Kaadaare said the construction of a dam at Salmana would serve as a source of economic venture for the teeming youth.
According to the Assembly Member, the youth at the community resorted to traveling to the southern sector during the dry season to engage in activities such as illegal mining.
Mr Kaadaare also appealed to the government, benevolent individuals and institutions to help dredge the Gbache dam, which provided water for dry season farming and for the animals in the area.
He said the dam had not been dredged since it was dug by a son of the community several years ago.
