He asked that it should not be business as usual and that there should be radical shift towards technology application to raise  production levels.   He was addressing farmers at a forum they held at Nyinahin, the district capital, to discuss ways of making farming attractive and rewarding to the young people in the area.

They also used it to elect new chief and queen farmers for the town.  Mr. Darko underlined the government’s unwavering determination to transform the face of the nation’s agriculture.   He said everything would be done to assist improve the lives of farmers by ensuring that they had access to inputs and market.

Nana Otuo Antwi Boasiako, the Deputy District Chief Farmer, advised his colleague farmers into cocoa farming to make sure that their farms were properly maintained. They should additionally stick to best practices, which had over the years helped to sustain the quality of Ghana’s cocoa beans. Mr. Edmund Frimpong Manso, 52, was elected as the new Nyinahin local chief farmer.

He polled 245 votes out of the 284 cast to beat off the challenge by Mr. Nathan Amankwah.   Madam Georgina Konadu was also elected the queen farmer after she garnered 218 votes as against the 63 votes polled by her only other contestant, Madam Yaa Achiaa.

Mr. Frimpong Manso appealed for the establishment of additional cocoa spraying gangs and said the situation where there were only two spraying gangs in the area, serving a farmer population of excess of 7,000 was not the best.