Through the effort of YARA Ghana, about hundred selected farmers in the Northern zone have been educated on irrigation technology at the Agrihouse foundation village at Banvum, a community in the Tamale Metropolis.
Visit to the field is part of this year’s Pre-harvest conference and exhibition event at the Aliu Mahama Sports stadium, with the theme; “Connecting the unconnected: the farmer-the Buyer and the Market”.
Mr. Mahama Abdul Rahman, YARA Ghana commercial Manager in-charge of the Northern sector in an interview told Journalists that the farmers visit to the farm is geared to assist them understand the practical aspect of modern-day farming and its related skills.
“We brought them here to see some of the crops that have been planted here under the irrigation, and see the technology Agrihouse is using to irrigate the crops, so as you can see we have splitted them into groups and our agronomist are engaging them, so we have taking them into the general vegetable production, good agronomic practices involve in vegetable production, they have seen how the irrigation system is setup, they have also seen the shade net and I think generally they are happy”.
This according to him, the engagement would be an eye opener to the farmers and their colleagues back home, he believed that, some of the farmers will start dry season farming using the new system learnt.
“Yesterday at the Aliu Mahama Sports stadium, we were talking abstract about irrigation but today we are talking practical just as you can see, all the crops are here, this can motivate somebody to go into pure dry season farming”.
He appealed to the farmers and the public to try a backyard garden under the irrigation scheme because of its household benefit.
Alhassan Abu, a beneficiary farmer expressed satisfaction about the field education, and promised to make good use of the knowledge by impacting others.
He however appealed to government and private organizations to find a way of making farm inputs affordable and available for the purposes of dry season farming.
