S05 AF JanFeb 2013 Investment & Flowers_Layout 1 31/01/2013 14:46 Page 20
INTERVIEW
Lemuel Quarshie Martey, from Ningo Prampram in the Greater Accra Region, was voted National Best Farmer of Ghana. He talked to Emmanuel Yartey on his awards and the need for the young to take to farming as it is a catalyst to Ghana’s development.
Ghana’s best farmer of 2012 talks to African Farming PLEASE GIVE US a brief background of yourself. I have a Bachelors degree in Human Resources and won the Regional Best Farmer in 2005, 2006 and 2010 in the Damgbe West district of the Greater Accra Region and the National Best Farmer in 2012. I am married with three children. You are 38 years old, the youngest to have been awarded the National Best Farmer. How did you feel, and what message did it send to you and the teeming unemployed Ghanaian youth? Indeed, I am extremely happy and grateful to God. Undoubtedly, farming is a difficult business but very lucrative if it is approached with a sense of professionalism. I am, therefore, challenging the teeming unemployed youth to emulate my example since there is enough money in the soil. But it is not just calling on the youth to enter into agriculture; more importantly, they need enough funds to start with, because agriculture is capital intensive. How do you react to this? That is true, but that is why the government has come up with interventions like fertiliser subsidy, provision of high-yielding seeds and agro chemicals among others to ease the problem of funding. But I will suggest that government provides interest-free loans to farmers for them to pay in instalments for a reasonable period of time. This, I think, will help a great deal in determining our long term projections. Suffice it to say that currently, farmers are forming strategic groups for the sole purpose of channelling their needs to government for attention. A few days after you had been awarded the national best farmer, a section of the local media accused the organisers of the national farmers’ day of foul play, indicating that you did not merit it and that it is because you are a staunch National Democratic Congress (NDC) activist. How do you react to this allegation? It is a fact that I am the youngest national best farmer ever that the country has produced 20 African Farming - January/February 2013
Lemuel Quarshie Martey National Best Farmer of Ghana.
I am challenging the teeming unemployed youth to emulate my example since there is enough money in the soil. and with such a record, you will agree with me that those who are not amenable to change will not be comfortable because they always expect that the ages of the national best farmer should be between 50 and 70
years. So I was not surprised at all with those false allegations levelled against me. But even if I am an NDC activist, is that a criminal offence? I am a Ghanaian and as I am enshrined in Ghana’s Constitution, there must be freedom of association and so I don’t understand why some people will attempt to equate the selection of national best farmer to partisan politics, religion, ethnicity etc. It is very unfortunate. But let me indicate that I went through the process genuinely before being declared the national best farmer.