Mr Nicholas Soyiri, the Jirapa Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), has advised youth who are into agriculture in the municipality to maximize the government’s YouStart initiative to help improve their farming activities.

He said the programme, which was to support youth-led enterprises, could provide the youth-led agri-businesses with the financial support needed to invest in their farming activities.

Mr Soyiri said this at a durbar of farmers at Sabuli in the Jirapa Municipality when the Guinness Ghana Breweries PLC presented 100 pieces of tarpaulins to sorghum farmers in the Sabuli area through its sorghum aggregators in the Upper West region – Agriaccess Ghana Limited, Awo Fields and AE Farms.

Farmers from Sabuli, Guo, Chapuri and Ullo communities attended the event.

The MCE indicated that the government was not sitting, unconcerned but would do its best to provide fertilizer for the farmers.

“Government is investing an amount of GHȻ10 million to support startups and young entrepreneurs to bounce back after COVID-19. I urge young people in Jirapa to take advantage of this programme”, he explained.

Mr Soyiri said the government was also rehabilitating the road networks to enable the farmers to cart their farm produce from their farms to the storage and market centres.

Madam Helen Wessie, the Managing Director of Guinness Ghana Breweries PLC, noted that the farmers were the cradle of the company and appealed to them to consolidate the relationship through continues supply of sorghum to the company.

While expressing gratitude to the farmers in Sabuli and its environment, she intimated that the tarpaulins enabled the farmers to produce quality sorghum grains, free of stones and other foreign materials to the company for processing.

As part of efforts to help the farmers to scale up their production and to meet the demand of the company, the company, through its aggregators, would also supply the farmers with fertilizer to increase sorghum production

Mr Tony Poore, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Agriaccess Ghana Limited, observed that sorghum production had been proven to be a good business with the intervention of Guinness Ghana Breweries PLC by providing ready market for the produce.

He, thus, encouraged the farmers to double their production to help meet the demand of the company for the 900,000 (50kg) bags (45,000mt) of sorghum target for this year.

The farmers raised concerns about the high cost of the farm inputs and tractor service and the difficulties in accessing fertilizer, which they said served as a hindrance to their farming businesses.

They, therefore, appealed to the government and agricultural-related non-governmental organisations to come to their aid with the provision of fertilizers, farm machinery and other inputs.