Kosmos Innovation Center (KIC) has announced the call for applications for the 2024 School Farm Competition. The competition is open to all Junior High and Senior High Schools across the country.

The School Farm Competition, which is an initiative of the Blue Skies Foundation, introduces students in junior and senior high schools to agriculture innovation by focusing on horticulture.

The students learn from concepts such as nursing seedlings, transplanting, cultivation beds and the right application use of approved chemicals and fertilizer, as well as the use of PPEs.

Through practical experience, the program seeks to create a change in mindset from seeing agriculture as a form of punishment to seeing it as an economically viable activity.

Earlier this month, Blue Skies Foundation voluntarily handed over the governance and implementation of the program to KIC, after the two organisations entered a partnership for program collaboration starting in 2022.

The KIC-BSF partnership helped reach a total of 198 junior high and senior high schools in 2022 with over 5,500 students being exposed to opportunities in the agricultural value chain and changing their mindset to agriculture entrepreneurship. 

As of December 2023, more than 18,000 students had been trained under the program. The growth in the program is mainly due to funding support KIC receives from the Mastercard Foundation under its multi-year partnership with KIC, helping to achieve the objectives of the program.

Through the competition, participating schools have been able to embark on many social projects such as the construction of school canteens, and the purchase of equipment for school among others.

For some schools, the produce from the School Farm has also been used to serve meals at the canteen.

Speaking about the impact of the program, Benjamin Gyan-Kesse, Executive Director for KIC outlined the importance of creating a mindset change about agriculture among young people, while stressing the values and lessons of endurance and discipline that the process of cultivation instils in young people.

The competition awards schools through defined criteria that focus on production, innovation, consistency, and best practices, in addition to other areas of assessment.

Some past winners of the School Farm Awards include Adoe D/A Junior High School (Best School Farm, JHS Category, 2023), Ghana Senior High School, Tamale (Best School Farm, SHS Category, 2023),  Kwahu Tafo Senior High School (Best School Farm,  SHS Category 2022), Peki Senior High Technical School (Most Committed School, 2023) and Ecole Ronsard (Most Innovative School) among others.