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Dry Season Farmers in UER Get Good Harvest
Gbeogo (U/E) Jan. 7, Ghanadot/GNA -
Farmers in parts of the Upper East Region who took advantage
of the receding flood water to plant water melon; maize,
onion, tomatoes and other vegetables are expecting a good
harvest.
“None of the crops failed and those who have started
harvesting attest that they have never had more produce,
especially with water melon that can be seen in heaps all
over the place,” Mr Roy Ayariga, Regional Director of
Agriculture, said.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at the weekend
during a tour of some dry season farms at Gbeogo, in the
Talensi-Nabdam District, Mr Ayariga said the Ministry of
Food and Agriculture (MOFA) encouraged the farmers in
October 2007 to use the wet valleys and rivers to do dry
season gardening so they could support themselves after they
had lost all they owned in the floods.
He said MOFA supported the farmers with water pumps and
other incentives and while some cropped in the low valleys
that still had receding water of the floods; others were
given pumps to use water from the White Volta and other
rivers to irrigate their crops.
He said some of the farmers, who could not afford the fees
of the Irrigation Company of the Upper Region (ICOUR)
because they lost their property in the floods, were making
good use of the rivers.
Mr Ayariga expressed regret that farmers in the Bongo
District, who could have used water from the Red Volta River
to farm, were sacked from the fertile lands by the Forestry
Department because the bare land was said to be part of a
forest reserve.
He suggested that the Forestry Department could rather give
the farmers seedlings of fast growing trees to plant on that
land while they cropped it so that when the trees grew, the
farmers would then quit, leaving a forest and not the bare
land that it was at presently.
He said farmers and traders had started loading trucks of
onion, which sold at GH¢ 60 per maxi-bag and water melon
that sold at between 10 pesewas and 50 pesewas depending on
its size.
GNA
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