‘See agric as viable option to earn decent livelihood’
The youth must see agriculture as viable option to be employed and earn a decent livelihood, the Chief Corporate Services and Sustainability Officer of MTN Ghana, Ms Adwoa Wiafe, has stated.
According to her, agriculture was lucrative and it was now a less drudgery venture as technology and modern methods of farming had changed the face of the sector and made farming easy.
Ms Wiafe noted this in Accra on Thursday when some rural farmers visited the Umoja Farms at the Presbyterian Boys’ Senior High School, Legon in Accra.
The tour, organised by MTN Foundation for some women farmers from the La Nkwatanang-Madina Municipality, was to mark the MTN International Day of Rural Women under the MTN Women Empowerment in Agribusiness programme, which is part of the activities to celebrate the International Day of the Rural Women which fell in October 15, this year.
As part of the programme, the women who are part of a group of 160 farmers to be supported by MTN Ghana Foundation as part of its Economic Empowerment
focus area were taken through new methods of farming such as drip irrigation, plastic mulching and fertilizer application.
Furthermore, Ms Wiafe said as part of the economic empowerment initiative of MTN Foundation, her outfit was focused on introducing women to smart farming.
“We realise now that we are getting less and less access to farmland, and so we have to make the best use of the land that we have. And one of the ways in which we can do that is to employ digital and modern methods of farming,” she outlined.
In line with that, Ms Wiafe mentioned that MTN Foundation had approved a programme to support 160 rural women famers within the La Nkwatanang-Madina Municipality.
She said the programme would be done by the La Nkwatanang-Madina Municipal Agriculture Department and other partners as Defarmercist Limited.
The General Manager of Defarmercist Limited, Mr Charles Agyeman, who introduced the women farmers to new methods of farming, said, ‘plastic mulch’ innovation had been introduced to control weeds on vegetable farming and currently vegetable farmers needed not to weed to control weeds on their vegetable farms.
Mr Agyeman underlined that an irrigation timer product had been introduced to help farmers to irrigate their farms with little human intervention and at their own schedule time.
A beneficiary of the programme, Ms Christelle Gle, said through the programme, she was currently cultivating pepper and vegetables at the backyard of her house.
She also indicated that, she had adopted the drip irrigation system to water the vegetables and could farm all-year-round.
BY KINGSLEY ASARE
