Food production gets a major boost…as OCP Africa launches Agribooster program

With the twofold objective of reinforcing leadership and fulfilling commitment to global food security, OCP Ghana, a subsidiary of the Moroccan phosphate group, OCP Africa, launched an Agribooster program in Ghana earlier this month.

This is with a view of boosting food production in Ghana.

At the launch of the program, Country Manager OCP Ghana, Samuel Oduro-Asare said, his outfit is determined to transform agriculture in Ghana to enhance food security and to improve farmers’ income.

“We are also very passionate about stimulating the youth’s interest in agriculture as well as other interest groups,” he added.

Oduro-Asare said this initiative aims at supporting smallholder farmers to gain get access to good quality inputs and financial services, enhance market linkages, and help them benefit from training on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP).

This has an end goal of helping farmers increase their yields and ultimately, their revenues, Oduro-Asare noted.

Two agricultural input packages; Agribooster Plus and Agribooster would be introduced to the farmers under the program.

The former is a compressive package consisting of high performing hybrid seeds, crop protection chemicals and fertilizers. As such, it is offered to lead farmers, who would also benefit from training in GAP and farming as a business. On the other hand, the latter consists of fertilizer and cascaded training on GAP and farming as a business.

The core objective of the package is to make evident the impact of training and good application of fertilizers on farm yields, and eventually, sway farmers to shift to compressive package.

This is with an overall outlook to enhancing a sustainable farmer ecosystem and consolidates availability of high quality agricultural inputs.

Director of Crops, Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), Dr Seth Osei Akoto said improving yields of priority crops would allow farmers to meet needed food demands.

This, he said, will minimize the pressure on the need to bring large amounts of new land into crop production.