See agriculture as viable option to earn decent livelihood - Adwoa Wiafe

The youth must see agriculture as a viable option for employment and earning a decent livelihood, the Chief Corporate Services and Sustainability Officer of MTN Ghana, Adwoa Wiafe, has stated.

According to her, agriculture is lucrative and is now a less laborious venture as technology and modern farming methods have changed the face of the sector and made farming easier.

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, organized by the 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 Rural Women on October 15 this year.

As part of the programme, the women, who are part of a group of 160 farmers to be supported by the 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.

Further more, Ms. Wiafe said that as part of the economic empowerment initiative of the MTN Foundation, her outfit was focused on introducing women to smart farming.

“We realize 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. One of the ways we can do that is to employ digital and modern methods of farming,” she outlined.

In line with that, Ms. Wiafe mentioned that the MTN Foundation had approved a programme to support 160 rural women farmers within the La Nkwatanang-Madina Municipality.

She said the programme would be conducted by the La Nkwatanang-Madina Municipal Agriculture Department and other partners such as Defarmercist Limited.

The General Manager of Defarmercist Limited, Mr. Charles Agyeman, who introduced the women farmers to new methods of farming, said the ‘plastic mulch’ innovation had been introduced to control weeds in vegetable farming, and currently, vegetable farmers do not need to weed to control weeds on their vegetable farms.

Mr. Agyeman underlined that an irrigation timer product had been introduced to help farmers irrigate their farms with little human intervention and at their own scheduled time.

A beneficiary of the programme, Christelle Gle, said that through the programme, she was currently cultivating pepper and vegetables in 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.

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