Alhaji Zakaria Alhassan Gundaa, the Northern Regional Chairman of the People's National Convention (PNC), has appealed to the government to give more assistance to farmers to increase food production.
Alhaji Gundaa said this at Diare in the Savelugu/Nanton District where he had supported some 100 farmers with free plough service.
He has been supporting farmers in the Northern Region over the years with free tractor plough service and provides them with maize, rice, cow pea and Soya bean seeds for planting.
The farmers are expected to pay back after harvesting with a little interest so that the services could be extended to other farmers.
This year he has assisted some 2,868 farmers from eight districts to plough their farms as PNC's contribution towards poverty reduction.
The districts are East Gonja, Tamale Metropolis, Yendi Municipality, Central Gonja, Savelugu/Nanton, Karaga, Gushiegu and Tolon/Kumbungu.
Alhaji Gundaa said the NDC government's "Better Ghana Agenda" would be achieved if farmers continued to get support from the
government by way of fertilizer subsidy, improved and certified seeds and helping them cart food from the rural areas to market centres.
Alhaji Gundaa commended the government for the subsidy on fertilizer but called for the abolishing of the coupon system because some individuals were abusing it and this makes it difficult for the coupons to reach all farmers.
He said the only means of reducing poverty in the country was to giver enough assistance to farmers to produce more food and advised the youth to embrace farming instead of moving to the cities for non-existent jobs.
Alhaji Gundaa said though Ghanaians had continuously failed to vote for the PNC, individuals in the party would go on using their little resources to help alleviate poverty in the country, especially in the northern part of the country.
He said over the years he had been extending such assistance to farmers irrespective of their political, religious and ethnic backgrounds
and this had helped to improve the living standards of the people.
Alhaji Gundaa said farming was a lucrative business and a permanent employment, and expressed regret that the youth were shying away
from it and seeking highly competitive and non-extent jobs in the cities.
He said no government including industrialized countries could completely solve unemployment and appealed to Ghana's unemployed
youth to desist from sitting under sheds and doing nothing but must go into farming.
Alhaji Gundaa appealed to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to give more education and training to farmers, especially those in the
hinterland, about modern trends in farming to ensure that they use improved and certified seed to avoid post harvest loses.