Agric profitable enterprise, not punishment — Nat’l Best Farmer
The 2021 National Best Farmer, Alhaji Mashud Mohammed, has said agriculture is a profitable venture that has bright prospects for those who will venture into it.
He demystified the erroneous perception that it is a form of punishment and a preserve for the uneducated and poor.
He, therefore, urged the youth to engage in agriculture for a brighter future, no matter their level of education.
“As the African Development Bank President once said: “If you want to be a millionaire in the next five years then come into agriculture and you’ll not regret it,” Alhaji Mashud Mohammed told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview on Friday.
Sharing his excitement with the GNA on the sidelines of the 37th National Farmers Day in Cape Coast, he said he was once a teacher but quit teaching and ventured into agriculture.
“I started farming about 15 years ago with four hectares of rice. Right now, I’m cultivating only rice about 500 hectares, and over 2,700 hectares of soya beans and maize. I have not regretted,” he said.
“So my motivation for doing all this is just that I saw that agriculture has a huge potential, especially when it comes to employment and feeding people”.
“Basically, that’s what I’ve been so much interest in doing over the past 15 years as a peasant farmer just to feed my family, but going forward, whenever I harvest, I give some to people so I had the belief that if I scale up, so many people could benefit from me and so I invested in it”.
