Workshop for 4-H Ghana opens at Bunso

A four-day leadership training workshop for 250 4-H Ghana, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Club Advisors and members of District Management Committee of the club has opened at the Bunso Cocoa College.

The trainees are made up of teachers, agricultural extension agents, out of school youths and officials from the decentralized departments of some selected district assemblies in the Eastern, Greater Accra and the Volta Regions.

The NGO is affiliated to the National 4-H Council of the United States of America and aims at training the youth to be responsible leaders.

Speaking at the opening of the workshop, the Executive Director of 4-H Ghana, Mr. Appiah Kwaku Boateng, said the training programme formed part of the two million US Dollar grant from Dupont Pioneer of the USA for the promoting of food security in Africa.

That, he said, would be done through the introduction of the youth of Africa to high agricultural production techniques and seeds to increase agricultural productivity and economic gains to revive their interest in agriculture.

He said through the 4-H enterprise gardening project, the old school gardening system had been revived in 120 Junior High and Primary Schools and out of school youths had been supported to establish 48 community farms in the Eastern Region.

Mr. Boateng said the project supported the participants in the project with tools, hybrid vegetable and maize seeds.

He said so far participants in the project had cultivated 78 hectares of hybrid maize farms.

Mr. Francis Clottey Odonkor, the District Agricultural Director for Yilo Krobo, said a test conducted in his district using the planting protocol of 75 centimeters by 25 centimeters yielded 32 mini-bags of maize per acre.