Make farming an attractive profession for Ghana’s youth

Mr Henry Abraham, Chief Executive Officer, HJA Africa has said that farming has a lot of potential to grow Ghana’s economy and to be attractive to the youth.

He said it will reduce rural-urban drift for non-existent jobs, a situation that ended up choking the cities, make Ghana self-sufficient with food security, improve balance of payments by cutting imports, and make a substantial practical contribution to moving Ghana beyond aid.

“There is a real opportunity to make farming a more attractive profession for Ghana’s youth,” he said.

He made this statement during his presentation at the West Africa Organic Conference (WAOC) in Accra, to unveil a recent independent scientific trial results on the company’s new Organic Farming Aid (OFA) combined growth enhancer and pest and fungal control all-in-one product for farmers.

He noted that Ghana’s most fundamental economic drivers, and its most fundamental economic problems, were in the agriculture sector, with its low productivity as the sector accounted for 40 per cent of Ghana’s workers and needed much interventions to boost production, crop yield and pest control.

Speaking on his new discovery made out of charcoal remains, he said that the trail of OFA on farms within the Ashanti Region from March to June gave a yield increase of over 40 per cent and outperformed standard NPK fertilizer, whilst costing less than a tenth of the NPK equivalent; adding that combining NPK and OFA gave even better results.

He said the other trails on some selected farms within the same region showed that the organic miracle was equally effective against the major maize pest of fall armyworm, and raised yields by an amazing 80-102 per cent compared to an untreated area.

“Complementing these independent scientific trials, HJA Africa has been receiving outstanding feedback on OFA from farmers trying it out all over Ghana, who are growing a wide range of crops, and using OFA for yield enhancement, pest and fungal control,” he said.

He said the company and its partners were already able to produce plenty of OFA. Extrapolating the trial results, their current production capacity can already add the equivalent of another 20 per cent to Ghana’s current fertilizer supply.

“That has the potential to generate a 10 per cent increase or even more in Ghana’s overall crop yields.” he said.

He said given the huge opportunities for social and commercial benefits from OFA, HJA Africa are confident of raising the $5m of investment finance they needed to expand production to a level equivalent to doubling Ghana’s current fertilizer use, and so potentially adding 50 per cent or more to the country’s crop yields, over the next few years.

Additionally, “this could in turn add an impressive GHC 3 billion annually to Ghana’s agricultural output,” he said.

He assured farmers that the completely natural and wholly Ghana made product, which was sustainable had come to stay.

The CEO said the independent trials were supervised by senior scientists at the University of Ghana, and were working with Council for Scientific and Industrial Research with an open-door to other partners interested in delivering OFA’s huge potential benefits as fast as possible.