Database project registers over 127,000 Ghanaian farmers

A project initiated by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) to create a national database of farmers has so far registered 127,606 farmers.

The programme is also expected to help farmers, farmer-based organisations (FBOs), agricultural producers, traders and processors provide the basis and mechanism to target policies, interventions and outreach programmes to solve marketing problems.

To help expedite action on the preparation of the database, the German Technical Co-operation (GTZ) had provided equipment such as computers and accessories for MoFA.

According to a senior member of the project team, Mr Shaibu Muniru, the project had intensified efforts to register as many farmers as possible.

He told the Daily Graphic in Accra that the first quarter of this year would be devoted to paying visits to peculiar problem areas to monitor and evaluate figures in registered areas where the data were not up to date.

The registration exercise, which began on a pilot basis in July 2010, was able to capture about 82,289 farmers as of May 2011.

The Agricultural Extension Division of MoFA, which is mandated to undertake the exercise, is collaborating with agricultural extension agents (AEAs) in all the 194 operational areas of the division to capture as many farmers as possible.

The Northern Region recorded the highest number of farmers of 20,751, while the Upper East had the least number of 4,402.

Taking the Daily Graphic through the data collation process, Mr Muniru explained that the AEAs gathered the required data on the farmers at the district level for onward transmission to the regional offices, from where the information was communicated to the national office before being inputed into the national statistics.

Source: Daily Graphic