Yara Ghana boosts farmers yield and profits

Yara Ghana Limited, the food nutrition solutions provider, continues to boost Ghana’s agricultural sector with its award-wining fertilizers.

The company’s impact is especially felt by farmers in the cocoa, cereal and vegetable sectors, three key subsectors of Ghana’s agricultural sector. Many of Ghana’s agric industry is dominated by smallholder farmers and many of whom would experience low yields without the application of fertilizers and other nutrition-boosting products.

Yara Ghana Limited was established in 2007 but the parent company – Yara International- with its headquarters in the USA, operates in over 150 countries worldwide.

In just a little over a decade of operations, the company which has one of its objectives as “Responsibly feed the world and protect the planet”, boasts a significant market share in the local fertilizer market, helping to contribute to increased yields and profitability.

Yara’s success and significance to the farming community can be traced to the fact that under the direction of its network of agronomists, Yara has initiated and undertaken a number of programmes to enable small holder farmers achieve the best results. These the company does through farmer trainings, retailer trainings, crop clinics, demonstrations farms, field days, radio programmes with opportunity for farmers to call in with their queries.

Yara started with a staff of five (5) and dues to its growth and acceptance by the agric value chain in the country, its direct staff is now 40. Yara, with its locations in Accra, Tema and Tamale, has also been increasing its supply of fertilizers to the market, and improving access to fertilizers by farmers through a wider distribution network of over 300 distributors and retailers across the country. This in turn also provides indirect employment to several Ghanaians.

Crop Clinics

Yara Ghana has also been offering technical support for farmers through its Crop Clinics. Along with the company’s distribution and retail partners, the Crop Clinics and its training programmes reache thousands of farmers every year. Using the Crop Nutrition Concept, it focuses on crop knowledge, portfolio combinations and application competence, in order to help Ghanaian farmers optimize profitability in a sustainable manner.

Yara Ghana undertakes scientific trials aimed at evolving cost effective crop nutrition solutions and programmes for Ghanaian farmers.

In terms of capacity building for farmers and dealers, it provides training and knowledge for farmers, Agricultural Extension Officers as well as dealers in agro-inputs. The focus among others is on the right application of fertilizers: right nutrients, right time and right place. In addition, it offers technical support for farmers on Yara Crop Nutrition approach, focusing on crop knowledge, portfolio combinations and application competence, in order to help Ghanaian farmers optimize profitability in a sustainable manner.

The three northerly regions

The fertilizer market leader is very active in the three regions of Ghana’s north, a geographical region which although is endowed with agricultural production capacity, still lags behind the southern part of the country in terms of development.

Yara has a well-established office in Tamale to provide close support for its staff in the zone including a main warehouse in Tamale and six consignment warehouses across the zone. The northern zone is a major breadbasket for the country’s food production especially in cereals and other food crops and forms a key part of Yara Ghana’s operations.

The company is keen in supporting the zone to improve food crop production in a profitable and sustainable way. Consequently, Yara Ghana has been offering sustainable crop nutrition solutions for farmers in Northern Ghana, supporting increased farmer productivity and profitability through Constructive Engagement with stakeholders, Efficient Knowledge sharing to deliver solutions to farmers an by increasing access to quality crop nutrition products.

In partnership with the United States Agency for International Development-ADVANCE Project, Yara Ghana supports over 130 demonstration farms on best practices in the three Northern Regions. Yara also supports the annual Farmers Day awards in Ghana and many of its farmers using the company’s products have gone on to win awards at the event.

Pre-Harvest Agri-business Exhibition & Conference

As a demonstration of its continuous commitment to the agric sector, Yara Ghana has provided financial sponsorship package to Agrihouse Foundation, the organisers of the Pre-Harvest Agri-business Exhibition & Conference. The 8th edition of the Pre-harvest event will take place this year from the 3rd-5th October at the Aliu Mahama Stadium in Tamale. The exhibition and conference will feature over 2,000 exhibitors and businesses across the agricultural value chain.

In a company statement, Yara Ghana said of the event: “We are hoping to see a lot of farmers and other players in the value chain attending this event. We are also expecting that a lot of networking and partnerships will be built and linkages established that will help further strengthen the agricultural value chain and enhance profitability among the various actors.”

The statement continued “We also expect to see an exciting exhibition that will showcase new and improved technologies in the sector that will help modernize agricultural practice in Ghana and make it attractive and profitable.”

“Yara as a leading player in the fertilizer industry believes in building partnerships and collaborations that will help strengthen the entire agricultural value chain. This is demonstrated by our collaboration with the USAID/ADVANCE on their project demos covering over 200 sites,” the company added.

The Pre-harvest event which had previously been handled by the USAID/ADVANCE is one such event that brings together actors in the value chain to network, build partnerships and help link farmers to up takers and aggregators and Yara believes its sponsorship of this event will help enhance and promote this objective. It is for this reason that Yara has been supporting the Pre-Harvest event over the past three years.