One hour, thousands of farmers helped: A good day for an extension worker in Ghana

Extension worker reaches farmers by radio

For 38 years, Alhassan Dramani worked as an extension officer for the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) in the Savelugu district of Ghana’s Northern Region. He travelled unforgiving roads to show farmers the best spots to lay seed, what kind of inputs to use, and how to store their yields.

He spent 38 years going from village to village to share news of harmful pests and unforeseen weather. It’s a demanding profession and the ministry’s tight budget is only making it harder.

“One extension officer visits a community once in every fortnight, every two weeks, and the visit cannot last the whole day,” Alhassan says. “So, in a community of over 200 farmers, how can one man visit them at once, all their fields?”

It’s a good question: what if one man could visit 200 farmers at once?

With the power of radio, Alhassan can be in the fields and homes of hundreds — or even thousands — of farmers. Hosting a one hour radio show on MIGHT FM, he has scaled up his impact on his community.

Listen to the radio documentary to hear the passion of this extension officer who serves his farming community with the information they need to improve their crop production and livestock health.

MIGHT FM was a partner in the Radio for farmer value chain project, a five-year project that recently ended. This project was funded by Global Affairs Canada.Learn more about this project in Ghana.

About the author
Jordan Omstead spent the summer of 2017 working with Farm Radio in Accra through the Uniterra program.

 

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