Twenty-one women have benefitted from a poultry start-up project aimed at reducing animal protein importation and encouraging rearing.
The women were given 82 each of the same 14-week-old pullets layer birds, 50kg bags of feed and a cage for housing the birds, under the initiative known as the Savannah Investment programme.
Mr Eric Tergu, the Acting Sissala East Municipal Veterinary Officer, who supervised the distribution, said the programme’s objective was to reduce the importation of animal protein, enhance the competitiveness of the poultry industry, and decrease malnutrition among households.
He advised the beneficiaries to take the support seriously and embrace it as their own rather than perceiving it as a project of the Department of Agriculture, adding that the successes of the first 22 beneficiaries were the reason they received the support.
The first 22 received 120 pullets between 2021 and 2022.
The Department would only go for monitoring to ensure the programme was successful, he said.
“A new one is in the pipeline called the Savannah Agriculture Development Project (SADEP), which the Sassala East Municipality had been selected to benefit from.”
It was to generate income for the households and enhance the creation and strengthening of agribusinesses to increase the income of the various actors along the value chain.
He cautioned them against selling the birds, saying, “don’t go and sell or allow them to die to prevent the Municipality from benefiting from future projects.”
Forty-three women farmers had earlier been enrolled onto the Savannah Investment programme.
Source: Ghana News Agency