The United Nations predicts acute food insecurity in countries including those of West Africa over the next few years.  Since Ghana has good growing conditions and abundant labour, Ashanti Development created a Farm Support Project to take advantage of these.

In each participating village, up to 20 farmers become full participants and receive  four years of agricultural and marketing training, and loans to buy quality farm inputs.  They must repay the loans with interest at every harvest, after which money plus interest are loaned to them again.  At the end of four years, the project closes but moves – with the loan fund – to a new village and the cycle is repeated.  In this way the project is self-sustaining. 

Within the first year of training, crops typically double or treble and hunger is eradicated from participating villages.  After four years, villages no longer need our help and many farmers have become relatively wealthy.  The Ghana Government recently sent observers to inspect our scheme and incorporated elements of it into Ghana’s Agricultural Strategy.

Although no more than twenty farmers per village can be full participants in the scheme, typically twice as many attend the formal lessons as observers.  These include non-participating farmers from the village as well as farmers from outlying villages and since our model is easy to follow good practice spreads fast. 

By 2025, the scheme was operating, or had been completed, in 79 villages.