Yara Ghana limited in collaboration with Ransboat Company, a Yara distributor has opened a fertilizer distribution point at Maame Krobo in the Afram Plains South District of the Eastern Region. The distribution point will serve the needs of farmers in Donkorkrom,Tease and surrounding communities.

Hither to,retailers of fertilizer products had to travel long distances by road to buy fertilizers. This impacted negatively on farmer productivity since the price of fertilizers for the farmers was high due to transport charges leading to low use of fertilizers.

According to the Yara Sales Agronomists for the Region Mr. Issaka Osman, "until we teamed up with Ransboat Company to set up this outlet, the nearest distribution point for fertilizers was at Nkawkaw or Kumasi which is roughly four and five hours drive respectively and mostly over bad roads".

According to him "access to Yara fertilizers in the area was difficult and sometimes a bit costly due to the long transport distance and associated transport cost from outlets in Nkawkaw or Kumasi’.

Explaining the rationale behind the venture,the Marketing Assistant of Yara Ghana, Mr. Kwame Okyere stated that Yara is committed to supporting farmer productivity and profitability "so together with our partner Ransboat Company,we decided to bring the products closer to the farmers in order to make it more accessible and affordable".

This also means more farmers can use the products to help increase their yields and subsequently their profits.

"Being a predominantly cereal growing area,farmers will now have easy access to the Yara Mila Actyva fertilizer which is an NPK formulated for cereals and which have been proven in trials and demonstrations to help increase yields from an average of 5 bags per acre to 18 bags per acre" he added.

Yara will set up a demo farm on maize in the area to compare the traditional farmer practice to the Yara protocol in order to further demonstrate to the farmers in the district the profitability of the Yara solutions to the farmer.

The Ransboat Company outlet has the capacity to stock 3,000 bags of 50 kg fertilizers at a time and will have an agronomist on hand to offer technical advice to farmers.