Agricultural input dealers sign MOU on training

Accra, July 20, GNA - The 3rd Annual General Meeting of the Ghana Agricultural Input Dealers Association (GAIDA) has ended at Ejisu in the Ashanti Region with the singing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to streamline the training curriculum of agro dealers. The MoU was signed between International Centre for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development (IFDC) on the one hand and the Plant Protection and Regulatory Services Department (PPRSD) of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, and Environmental Protection Agency on the other hand.

A statement issued on Monday in Accra by DAIDA said Mr Vesper Suglo, Director PPRSD, Mr John Pwamang, a Director at EPA, and Dr Kofi Debrah, Country Representative of IFDC-Ghana, signed on behalf of their organizations.

The statement said the objective of the MoU was to develop basic and intermediate technical training curriculum and delivery methodologies for training of agro-input dealers and to provide basic and intermediate technical training. "Now that the MOU is in force the developed training curriculum becomes the standard for training agro dealers in Ghana," the statement said.

Dr Debrah said that IFDC had been training agro-dealers together with PPRSD and EPA since 2004 and the time had come to institutionalize training using a standard syllabus that would lead to certification. He expressed his gratitude for the enthusiasm and input provided by GAIDA and said he hoped that all trained input dealers would become members of the association. Dr Debrah thanked the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) for funding the agro-dealer development project, which he hoped, would go a long way to support Ghana's agriculture. He noted that for farmers to purchase and use inputs, they should be able to sell their produce at remunerative prices and announced that AGRA would soon provide another funding for IFDC to implement a project that was aimed at linking farmers to the markets in Ghana, the sub-region and the global market. Mr Suglo said he was optimistic that the revival and election of the new GAIDA executives and the collaboration through the signing of the MoU would contribute tremendously to check labelling, adulteration and faking in the system which happened to be the basic challenges of the association.

Mr Pwamang acknowledged the long-standing collaboration between EPA and the association and urged all members not to let the benefit of the agro-dealer training outlined through the collaborative MoU to slip by as this would contribute to strengthening their efforts towards addressing teething issues facing the agro-chemical industry. The AGM also saw the election of new executives of GAIDA with the new president being Mr Bower Tetteh Solomon Amartey as president. The AGM was organized under the sponsorship of the Ghana Agro Dealer Development project (GADD) being implemented by International Centre for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development (IFDC) in collaboration with the Ghana Agricultural Associations Business Information Centre (GAABIC).