Youth and Social worker, Victor Fosu-Boamah, has underscored the need to provide innovative and sustainable micro-credit and support services to young farmers to enable them to purchase inputs and engage in recommended farm practices.

According to him, just encouraging the youth to venture into farming in itself cannot yield any meaningful result than providing the necessary financial support.

He stated that identifying the most effective pathways to agricultural commercialization that empowers women, reduce rural poverty, and improve food security should be a major morale booster for young people to start farming.

Mr Fosu-Boamah explained that an innovative financial system that is sustainable and not subject to abuse and free of political strings can empower particularly young farmers, thereby enhancing productivity as well as improved well-being of the farmers’ household.

He said a successful modern farmer must be able to invest more in labour, fertilizers, and other agro-chemicals but the youth of today lacks the financial muscle to do it.

“Many farmers do not use the recommended practices for cultivating hybrid varieties of crops, resulting in poorer yields than expected because many of the young farmers cannot meet the costs of these inputs, new techniques, and labour,” Mr Fosu-Boamah added.

He recommended a credit system where farmers could be able to afford the inputs and pay for labour, stressing that “this system must be sustainable through carefully crafted innovative mechanisms to retrieve loans”.

The Youth and Social Worker further encouraged Ghana’s young farmers to adopt smart agriculture practices to reduced input usage, boost agro-forestry, deal with climate change, and respect conservation.

These, he said, are essential to guarantee a steady flow of income and food to smallholder young farmers.