A 51-YEAR-OLD farmer of Vakpo in the Kpando District of the Volta Region, Madam Gladys Doe, was adjudged the best farmer in the district for the year 2008.
That was not the first time Madam Doe had won a prize in agriculture.
Madam Doe, who said she went into farming 10 years ago after 18 years sojourn in Nigeria, said she won the first prizes in cassava and mango production in 2005 and 2007 respectively.
In an interview after receiving her prize, Madam Doe said she learnt the profession from her late father, Mr Gabriel Doe.
Madam Doe took home a certificate, a table top refrigerator, a bicycle, a knapsack sprayer, a number of bars of Key soap, machetes and a pair of wellington boots.
In all, 25 farmers, including a disabled person, Mr Afatsao Bobodza of Kpando Bame, were awarded.
The Vakpo Senior High School (SHS) and Gbefi Hoeme Anobi District Assembly Junior High School also received prizes.
At the ceremony, the Kpando District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr Pius Kwami Adanuti, said the country could overcome the effects of globalisation, only if the people shifted their preference for foreign goods to made-in-Ghana goods.
He said in rice cultivation, for instance, Ghana had the capacity to produce her requirements but the people had developed an insatiable taste for rice from the Far East.
Mr Adanuti called on farmers to add value to their produce to meet international market standards.
For her part, the Kpando District Director of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), Madam Cecilia Gboloo, noted that agricultural production was improving in the district.
On behalf of the farmers, she commended the President, Mr John Agyekum Kufour, for responding to the cry of the farmers by subsidising by half the prices of fertilisers.
The Krontihene of Anfoega Traditional Area, Togbe Ganahe Akompi V, appealed to the Kpando District Assembly to reconstruct the collapsed local market.
He said it was ironical to be awarding farmers when they did not have any place to market their produce.
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