Eighty year-old Mary Anobea Asafu-Adjaye has emerged the overall Best Farmer in the Okaikwei North Municipality (ONMA) in the Greater Accra Region.
Madam Asafu-Adjaye was recognized after forty years of sustained farming activities in the Municipality.
The Overall Best Farmer walked away with a tricycle known in the local parlance as ‘Aboboyaa’; Wellington boots; rain coats; wheel barrow; cutlasses, pieces of clothes, soaps, citation among other prizes.
Asafu-Adjaye is among some eleven farmers awarded in the Municipality for their varied contributions to the development of agriculture.
Speaking at the 36th National Farmer’s Day celebration on Friday on the theme: “Ensuring Agribusiness Development Under COVID-19-Opportunities and Challenges” Boye Laryea, the Municipal Chief Executive said the government has in place programs and initiatives to boost agricultural growth in the country.
He said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government has “worked assiduously to confront the challenges” the country is facing in this COVID season.
Mr. Laryea mentioned among others the distribution of agrochemicals to 743 farmers; spraying of the farms of 47 farmers and subsidies for fertilizers as well as hybrid seeds for some 654 farmers as some of the measures by government to absorb the impact of COVID 19 on agriculture.
Chairman for the occasion Nii Ayibonte Adams III, Chief of Achimota in an address tasked the youth not to allow themselves to be used as agents of violence in the December general elections.
He explained that elections are about ideas and not violence.
Mr. Carl Cudjoe, Deputy Head of the Agricultural Department of the Municipality said the Assembly would continue to promote home gardening in the Municipality because of lack of lands for farming.
Later, Madam Asafu-Adjaye also a professional nurse told journalists that farming has been part of her upbringing.
She urged the youth to go into farming in their small way instead of waiting to start big farms and charged them to disregard the idea that it is uneducated people who farm.
Aside Madam Asafu-Adjaye, other individuals were rewarded in the following categories: Best Ruminant Farmer; Best Rabbit Farmer; Best Poultry Farmer; Best Processor; Best Crop Farmer and Best Vegetable Farmer.
The others are: Best Home Gardener; Best Youth Farmer, Best Woman Farmer with the Assembly’s Faustina Obodai Osei Nyantekyi emerging as the Best Agriculture Extension Agent for the year 2020.