Madam Rita Yooke Oman, 2018 best farmer for the Ningo-Prampram District says it is not true that farming is the preserve of the poor in Ghana.
Madam Oman, speaking to the Ghana News Agency after being adjudged the best farmer for the district, indicated that there is money in farming.
“People always say that farming is a work for the poor, what they don’t know is that there is a lot of money in it, ” she noted.
According to her, she learnt the techniques of farming from her parents who engaged their brood of girls on their farm when growing up.
She added that each one of them was given a portion to cultivate cassava out of which their daily needs were supplied.
This, she said, triggered some competition among the sisters, as each of them worked hard to get the best yield, adding that it helped build her interest and commitment to cultivating and caring for the plants.
She recalled that “my father will always ask us to go and look for money under the bushes in the farm whenever we ask him for money, initially we didn’t understand him as there was no physical cash there, but he explained to us that the money we wanted was in the soil and we could only get it if we make good farms”.
According to her, she saved some money from the early stage of her farming career and bought a land and subsequently built houses and acquired more farmlands.
She encouraged the youth to develop interest in farming in addition to their educational exploits stating that two of her 10 children were actively involved in her farm.
Madam Oman indicated that even though she and her siblings received no education, she resolved to educate all her children at least to the senior high school level, therefore urged other farmers to educate their wards while encouraging them to develop interest in farming.
The 70-year-old farmer had 35 acres of pepper, 20 acres of tomatoes, 30 acres of watermelon, five acres of okra, 53 cattle, 70 goats, 45 turkeys, 70 guinea fowls, 50 local fowls.
The industrious farmer also owned a filling station at Dawa in the district which provided fuel to tractors working on farms in the area.
She also provided interest free loans to farmers, in addition to buying fertilizers for them to work with and repay later.
