A large number of beneficiary farmers in the Brong Ahafo Region who took government subsidised agricultural inputs including fertilizer, seeds and agro-chemicals on credit have failed to pay back, leaving the recovery rate hovering around 50% since the programme started in 2007.
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) has, since 2007 been supporting farmers particularly under the block farming with inputs on credit to help increase their production and income.
The farmers are expected to repay immediately after harvesting but some ?irresponsible? beneficiaries are adamant in repaying, Dr. Cyril Tadius Quist, Brong Ahafo Regional Director of MoFA disclosed this in an interview with B&FT.
Basically the programme targets farmers who are already into production, and understand the need to access the inputs to improve upon their productivity.
?Some farmers are not helping us. This is supposed to be a revolving fund, which we give out the inputs, recover and give it out again, but here is the situation whereby some farmers are not paying back which is inimical to the sustainability of the fund as it might get exhausted,? he highlighted.
?Some just don?t want to pay, they think the inputs are one of these ?free free? things government has been giving out. We try to follow them and generally what we do is freeze the further supply to defaulting farmers.?
The situation, he explained, has the tendency to defeat government?s plans of boosting food security. ?The challenge is, how do we fashion out strategic programmes that can be sustainable in the sense that whatever we give out on credit could be recovered.?
Dr. Quist revealed that in the quest to overcome the challenge of high rate default in Brong Ahafo, MoFA intends to bring on board the private sector to assist in the supply and recovery of subsidized inputs to farmers particularly in the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) zone.
?We are trying to bring in the private sector as service providers who will take the inputs on behalf of the farmers and distribute it for them. We believe they looking at it from a purely business perspective would be able to pressure the farmers more than what we civil servant can,? he said.
Like many subsidised programmes, this is a stop-gap intervention to move the farmers from their current state of production to become more productive where they can harvest enough and buy their own inputs against their enhanced income output, the Regional MoFA boss emphasized, adding that it is in the interest of the farmers to conform to the structures of the programme to make it a success.
By Edward Adjei Frimpong, Sunyani
