The Netherlands Ambassador to Ghana, Mr. Ron Strikker has encouraged trainees of the second session of GhanaVeg Agronomy Training of Trainers (ToT) to take due advantage of the opportunity given them through the training in order to raise the standards of production and farmer knowledge in vegetable production. He emphasised the need to also include women in the training process so as to equip their technical expertise in the vegetable sector. He used the opportunity to applaud the only female trainee in the group. Addressing the group, he said, quality production can only be effective when the right knowledge in production processes are put into practice and strictly adhered to. He hopes that, through this training, more farmers will be train on the right production processes to enhance the vegetable sector and eventually leading Ghana to become a great competitor in the production of quality and healthy vegetables for the domestic and export market.

Participants are being taking through a three-way interactive session of training; field/practical training, theory sessions and interaction between facilitators and group members. Participants will also be given assignment on-field and theories for a better understanding of the various modules under study. An online portal has been developed for trainees to learn they need to do to have the best result with spraying, fertilization, transplanting and crop protection. http://www.ghanaveg-e-learning.org/. These participants have been carefully selected across various value chain within the sector to be trained to give hands-on practical solution to farmers.

The program leader of GhanaVeg, Joep van den Broek explain GhanaVeg’s concept and idea around the training session to participants. He described what the situation is in Ghana to these trainers and tasked them to transfer knowledge received to other farmers who will in turn train their farmer groups.

This is done in eagerness to reduce the burden on Extension Advisors in the country as well as increase farmers’ ability of producing healthy quality vegetables. The training is facilitated by experts from Wageningen University and Research Centre and coordinated by GhanaVeg.