Agric Ministry puts up 145 combine harvesters for sale

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) in collaboration with Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), has made available 145 combine harvesters to facilitate incident free harvesting of rice during this year’s farming season.

Each of the combine harvesters is being sold at a subsidised price of GHȼ42,000 with 50 per cent down payment. The remaining amount would be spread for the next five years to enable interested persons to purchase them.

Alhaji Gilbert Seidu Iddi, Chief Executive Officer of SADA, made this known in Tamale on Thursday in Tamale after a consultative meeting with stakeholders in the agricultural value chain sector.

He said the objective was to offload the machines to farmers and the Agricultural Mechanisation Centres where access to farmers would be easy, adding that the rice production levels in the Northern part of the country had bounced back.

He said SADA had made interventions to assist farmers to increase the cultivation of maize, soya and rice productions in larger quantities to ensure that food security was achieved through commercial farming.

Mr Maurice Tanco Abisa-Seidu, Chief Director of MoFA said the undertakings of SADA were part of the medium and long and term plans of the Ministry.

He said, before 2009, there were only four combine harvesters in the country but in 2010, government imported a number of them bringing the total to 145 in order to reduce post harvest losses.

Mr Abisa-Seidu said the number of the combine harvesters were still inadequate and expressed the need for more to be brought in to ameliorate the sufferings of farmers.

Mr Joseph Kwasi Boamah, Director of Engineering at MoFA, said 39 persons have  expressed interest in the purchase of the combine harvesters and appealed to interested persons to apply for the facility.

Source: GNA