More factories to flood Adansi Akrofuom soon

The Adansi Akrofuom District Assembly is positioning itself to take advantage of the government’s flagship programme ‘One District One Factory’ by making raw materials readily available for potential investors.

Mr Maurice Jonas Woode, the District Chief Executive who stated this said the assembly was supporting the cultivation of various cash crops to serve as raw materials for factories that would be established in the area.

He stated this when he joined the Member of Parliament for the area, Mr Alex Blankson, to distribute 10,000 Coconut seedlings to 250 farmers in the district.

The Assembly as part of efforts to woo investors to the district, had already distributed 4,000 coconut seedlings as well as over 80,000 oil palm seedlings freely, to farmers in the district as part of the Planting for Exports and Rural Development (PERD) program.

According to the DCE, the Assembly through the PERD programme was seeking to create sustainable raw material base to spur up the decentralized industrialization drive of the government through the ‘One District, One Factory’ initiative.

“Factories cannot run without raw materials, hence the Assembly is focusing on readying raw materials like Coconut and Oil Palm for potential investors”, he told the farmers.

Mr Woode expressed delight at the number of youths who turned up to receive the coconut seedlings and said the time had come for the youth to accept the enormous benefit in agriculture and actively get involved to ensure sustainable income for themselves.

“We cannot always rely on mining to survive.

“I want to encourage the youth of this district to take advantage of the plethora of agricultural initiatives and programmes introduced by this government to empower themselves economically and make them self-reliant,” he added.

Mr Alex Blankson, the Member of Parliament for Adansi Akrofuom, on his part said the Assembly through PERD was working to support the government’s Alternative Livelihood Development Programme to offer alternative sources of income for people who were once engaged in illegal mining.

He said, hitherto, arable lands at Akrofuom had been depleted through the activities of illegal miners.

The MP pointed out that galamsey activities were not sustainable for the future of the youth, hence the need to take advantage of the free coconut seedlings by the Assembly and go into coconut production.

“If you have two acres of land, we will give you 140 seedlings and if one tree gives you 200 nuts in a year, you will have more than GHC28,000.00 as profit, so I urge the youth to get involved and be economically independent”, he stated.

He said the implementation of the programme would reduce poverty and improve the livelihoods of the people in the district.

Mr Richard Kwaku Nyamekye, District Director of Agriculture, lauded the efforts by the DCE and MP to get the seedlings readily available for farmers and urged them to continue to support agricultural development in the district.

He said his outfit would deploy technical officers to the farms of the beneficiaries to assist them with the planting and fertilization process as well as other modern farming practices to improve their yield.

Madam Anastasia Serwaa, farmer and a beneficiary of the seedlings talked about the benefits of agriculture and advised women to develop interest in agriculture.