Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at Donkorkrom in the Kwahu Afram Plains North District, he said although the programme saw significant increment in the number of beneficiary farmers, bad road network was a challenge to the farmers since they could not convey their produce from their farms to marketing centres.

He indicated that about 560 farmers in the district benefitted from the programme last year of which a total of 364 bags of NPK, 93 bags of seed maize, 18 bags of rice and 1,235 bags of urea were distributed to farmers in the district at subsidised prices by the government.

This, he explained, was to enable the farmers to produce on a large scale in order to increase their yield and incomes.

Mr Azidoku said, the project also provided vegetable seeds for interested farmers, especially the youth who  want to venture into agriculture.

Mr Azidoku hinted that a warehouse is being  constructed at Donkorkrom for farm produce to serve nearby communities  which are about 30 per cent completed  with  the capacity  to  store up to 10,000 tonnes of food stuffs to enable farmers store their produce for future sale.

He suggested that  more of such warehouses needed  to be  constructed  in hard to reach areas so that the beneficiaries of the programme could also preserve their produce for future sales.

The Director  expressed worry at the low  farmer  to extension officer ratio and said currently, the  ratio was  one extension officer  to 2,000 farmers, which  placed a lot of workload on the officers.

Mr Azidoku therefore called on the 2017 and 2018 beneficiaries of the PFJ to do well to settle their indebtedness to sustain the initiative.