An additional 20,000 tonnes of organic fertilisers will be supplied to the farmers for organic farming.

Prices of fertiliser

The Director in-charge of Crops at MoFA, Mr Seth Akoto, who made this known in Accra, added that out of 77 private companies who applied to supply fertilisers under the programme, 34 had been shortlisted to supply the inorganic type, while eight would supply organic fertiliser.

Commercial farmers

Mr Akoto gave an assurance that commercial farmers would be catered for under the PFJ because they had not been excluded from the programme.

“What we normally do is that if you are a commercial farmer and you are interested in participating, you write a letter to the minister for approval and based on the content of the letter, the minister will forward it to us and we will make sure that you get the necessary inputs as a commercial farmer,” he explained.

Mr Akoto stressed that since the introduction of the programme in 2017, those modalities had been there and there was no time that commercial farmers were discriminated against.

He explained that the ministry was limiting the number of hectares required for support to two to enable many farmers to qualify, adding that if that was not put in place, the inputs would be given to only commercial farmers.

Seed suppliers

On the need to ensure that seed suppliers did not short-change farmers with grains, the Director in-charge of Plant Protection and Regulatory Services of the ministry, Dr Felicia Amprofi, stated that for the 2019 farming season, the ministry had declared: “Operation clean seeds”.

She explained that it was the duty of the ministry to ensure that quality seeds were supplied to farmers, and for that matter, the ministry had increased the budget allocation to that sector to ensure that seed selectors did a good job.