Twenty- two distinguished farmers in the Eastern Region were honoured at this year's Farmers' Day celebration held on Friday at Ojarde near Asamankese.
Fifty-six year old, Nana Yaw Amakye, won the regional best farmers award.
He has cultivated different types of crops, such as cocoa, a number of acres of teak plantation, maize, citrus, oil palm, vegetables, plantain and many more.
The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Victor Emmanuel Smith congratulated the farmers and assured that government had put in place some interventions to address the constraints that militate against efficient and effective performance of farmers.
The National Farmers’ Day, instituted 28 years ago, is celebrated on every first Friday in December and is aimed at appreciating the efforts of farmers in feeding the nation and playing major roles in the socio-economic development of the country.
"On a day like this, hard working farmers who distinguished themselves in the various segments in agriculture production, be it crop, animal, fisheries, non-traditional products or food processing are given national recognition with awards to encourage them to do more" he said.
Mr Smith said Government had resolved to modernize agriculture in the country in order to attract the youth to take agriculture as a full time business.
He said farmers across the country should be praised for their enormous contribution towards national development.
He said until 2010, when the service sector over-took agriculture as the major contributor to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country, displacing agriculture to the second position, agriculture had all these years been the sector that spearheaded the development of the country.
Mr Smith said, the sector still leads in employment generation and has enormous opportunities for it to move the nation forward.
He said has government introduced tractor services for mechanized agriculture, subsidy for fertilizers and block farming, among others.
"To avoid post harvest loses, as a result of lack of market in times of bumper harvest, a buffer-stock was introduced" he maintained.
He said records available indicate that in 2011, nearly 200,000 metric tons of fertilizers were subsidized to enable farmers to get access to these inputs and increase productivity.
Mr Smith also mentioned that, since 2009, over 800 farmers had benefited from the youth in agriculture programme, which aims at increasing the productivity of farmers, especially those in the area of grain production.
He said the Eastern Region had been a beneficiary of government's tractor services package and that seventy tractors had been provided to ten centres and twenty one individuals to ensure that, farmers get easy access to machines for land preparation.
The Regional Minister said in Eastern Region, over 150 active and registered farmer-based organization had gone through series of training to build their capacities so that, they could be effective in their operations.
Similar awards were presented to farmers in the Lower West Akyem Municipality.