Yara Ghana, a fertilizer blending and bagging company has launched a rapid-response initiative dubbed Grow Ghana to distribute 18,000 metric tonnes of fertilizer to smallholder farmers across the country.
Over one hundred thousand farmers will be provided with free bags of high-grade YaraMila Actyva fertilizer in a package expected to reduce the cost of fertilizer to these smallholder farmers by at least 33.3 and also ensure they have access to enough fertilizer to sustain food production in the country.
Three trucks loaded with thousands of bags of fertilizer were on Friday 12th August 2022 dispatched from Yara Ghana premises in Tema heading for Techiman in the Bono East and Tamale in the Northern Region for distribution to the first batch of farmers.
Farmers in the Ashanti Region are expected to benefit from the next consignment and the distribution will continue until peasant farmers across the country have all been serviced with the Yara fertilizer to boost their work for this crop season.
At a ceremony on Friday 12th August 2022 to dispatch the first three truck-loads of fertilizer, the Managing Director of Yara Ghana, Mr. Danquah Addo-Yobo disclosed that Yara is committing US$20 million to the initiative.
The company, he said, is collaborating with the African Fertilizer Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Alliance for Green Revolution (AGRA) to ensure the success of the programme.
According to him, the initiative is a response by Yara International to support farmers following the Russia-Ukraine war, which has greatly affected the fertilizer industry and also be the first to blaze the trail of the companies talking of supporting food production in these difficult times.
He said, “Yara has decided to show the courage to lead and Yara has taken the lead to come up with an initiative to support smallholder farmers and also to support food production.”
“The initiative is intended to be a catalyst for a bigger initiative across Africa. What the Grow Ghana initiative is going to do for us is Yara is committing $20 million to supply an equivalent of 360,000 of 50kg bags fertilizers to predominantly smallholder farmers.”
“We expect that we would reach at least 100,000 smallholder farmers in the process, and we expect that the package exercise of the initiative will support food production of more than 500,000 metric tonnes of cereals.”
He noted that AFAP, the key implementation partner is supporting the initiative on the ground to ensure it is executed as planned while an IT platform has been created to provide data and visibility over the distribution.
Every bag of the Grow Ghana YaraMila Fertilizer, he said, has a code that will be tracked with an IT tool to ensure they go to the beneficial farmers and not end up in the open market.
Minister for Agric, Mr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, applauded Yara Ghana for the programme and lamented the hiking prices of fertilizer because of the shortage resulting from the Russia-Ukraine war.
He said the initiative by Yara International and Yara Ghana to provide 20,000 metric tonnes of fertilizer to Ghanaian farmers is no mean donation.
“On behalf of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the government, I show my appreciation to Yara for such a donation.”
“We know that other international companies that we’ve been dealing with are promising that they are going to come up with similar donations. For the first time, Yara has taken the lead in this respect with the 20,000 metric tonnes ready to go out for distribution.”
The Minister noted the distribution is timely as the rains have already set in and farmers in both the forest regions and the northern savannah are busy, which is also time for the application of fertilizer.
He appealed to other international organizations that work with the Ministry in the fertilizer industry to also come forward and support farmers in Ghana.