By: Godfred Amoaful
The Minister of Food and Agriculture, Bryan Acheampong, says registration of farmers for the Phase Two of the Planting for Food and Jobs, PFJ programme begins today, March 12, 2024.
At a media briefing in Accra, Mr. Acheampong said the introduction of the Phase Two of the PFJ builds on the successes of the policy, introduced in 2017, and is targeted at increasing farm produce thereby moving away from the Subsidy Programme to Input Credit Programme.
The registration for the Phase Two of the Planting for Food and Jobs will enable farmers, who will be on the next phase of the programme to have access to the required support to boost their farming activities. The registration will be done on the Ghana Agriculture and Agribusiness Platform, GhAAP, a mobile application website. Mr. Bryan Acheampong emphasized that the introduction of the input subsidy in Phase Two of the Planting for Food and Jobs will help farmers to produce more, cut down costs, and make good savings.
The sector Minister noted that “the national commodity target on the Planting for Food and Jobs on some selected crops, and poultry. If you look at the aggregate of our efforts as Ghanaians, the baseline is in 2022, we are producing 15,000 metric tons of poultry but our national demand is 324,000 metric tons. It means that we are producing only five percent of what we consume and that is our problem. Clearly, we are not doing well. If we look at the rice we produced 1.2 million metric tons and therefore it shows that we are 48 percent efficient”, he said.
Mr. Acheampong added that the Ministry is making provisions to enable it to store the increased yield by the farmers across all 16 regions and 261 Districts of the country.
The Minister further urged banks and financial institutions to start granting farmers financial support as the second phase will provide the farmers with credible details.
