A 56-year-old Augustine Amankwah from Oyarifa was crowned as the Municipal Best Farmer last Friday, December 2, 2022 at Madina Social Welfare School Park.
Augustine Amankwah a middle school leaver, is a businessman and the Chief Executive Officer of Amas Farms Limited with a cold store of 1000 birds’ capacity.
Amas Farms has 18000 broilers, 1000 layers, 34 pigs, 2 acres cassava, 3 acres plantain, 2 acres pepper, 0.5 acre cabbage and carrot, 30 mango trees and 40 coconut trees. For achieving this great feat, he received a wheel barrow, four cutlasses, a polytank, a carton of weedicide, a certificate and other assorted farm inputs.
This year’s celebrations was on the theme: “Accelerating Agriculture Development through value Addition” and was graced by the Municipal Coordinating Director, Madam Abena Kwesiwa Kyei, the Oyarifa Mantse, Nii Odzenma Mensah and other key dignitaries.
As early as 7:00 a.m., hundreds of people from all over the Municipality thronged to the Social Welfare Park to join the celebrations. The Municipal best farmer said it was important that government accelerate efforts at mechanizing agriculture to make the sector more attractive for the youth.
He said it was time to support the local agriculture sector to produce more to the nation and extra for exports to reduce the food importation burden on the country.
Mr Amankwah then called on his fellow farmers to not only invest their money in farming but also invest their time since it is the surest way of becoming a successful farmer.
In a speech read on behalf of the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Hon. Jennifer Dede Adjabeng by the Municipal Coordinating Director, the MCE said the theme for this year’s celebration is meant to encourage both young and old to change our negatively held perception about farming.
This she said, will allow us the opportunity to explore the enormous benefits that can be derived from Agriculture sector leading to the achievement of self-sustainability.
According to her, government in order to achieve this is working assiduously to revive the agro-processing industry, under the One District One Factory initiative, as a way to ensure the availability of a ready market for all farm produce across the country to help reduce post-harvest losses and add more value to our raw materials.
“This will ensure that our hard-working farmers get the right prices for their produce as well as ensure the nation gets much higher foreign exchange through the exportation of finished products”. She added.
Other award winners included; First runner up, Tinattet Farms at Ayimensah and the second runner up Richard Frimpong who lives at Aboman.
The MCE special award for backyard farming went to Ami Christelle Gle who lives at Madina Social welfare, whereas 49 years old Ebenezer Badu also emerged as the best Agricultural extension officer.
The Best physically challenged and best woman farmer went to Alhaji Abdul Rahman and Cynthia Daiki Mills respectively.
SOURCE: ISD – LaNMMA
