Ernestina Osei-Tutu emerges Best Farmer for Akuapem North

A 48-year old woman, Ms Ernestina Osei-Tutu of Tinkong, won this year’s Best Farmer award for Akuapem North Municipality.

Ms Osei-Tutu has 16 acres each of cocoa and plantain farms, 18 other crop farms, as well as snail, rabbit, fish and pig farms.

Mr Issah Yaya, 62, who owns 135-acres of oil palm and other variety of crops at Asaasekorkor, won the Best Farmer for the Okere District, which celebrated the Day together with the Akuapem North Municipality at Mamfi.

Each of the awardees were given a tricycle and other farm inputs.

Ms Osei-Tutu appealed to the Government to subsidise farm machinery and equipment to enable farmers to acquire those equipment to mechanise agriculture in the country.

She called for the rehabilitation and constant maintenance of roads in farming areas to ensure easy transportation of farm produce to the markets.

Nana Ama Dokua Asiamah Agyei, the Member of Parliament for Akropong and Deputy Minister of Information, urged workers to take advantage of government agricultural policy to make legitimate extra income. She called for a special appreciation of women in agriculture.

Mr Kenneth Nana Addo, the District Chief Executive of Okere, said the Assembly would collaborate with the Ghana Education Service to stop using weeding as punishment for pupils to erase the wrong perception that farming was a punishment.

He said next year, the District would take advantage of the various water resources it had to promote fish farming.

Mr Addo said the District Assembly would cultivate 10,000 mango and 12,000 oil palm seedlings for distribution to farmers, next year, to promote mango and oil palm farming.