Agricultural Training

Agriculture training in Ghana covers a wide range of activities with trainees in diverse areas of agriculture. Agricultural training has often targeted primary producers such as farmers and technical facilitators such as agricultural extension workers. Training for extension agents and farmers varies from short to long term. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) (1992), “the length of a training activity can vary from short term training activities such as one day field demonstrations to longer term training that may last several months”. Agricultural extension programmes provide the much-needed help to farmers in the form of practical field advice and improved technologies from research institutions and the universities. It is therefore imperative that retraining programmes are organised to provide opportunities for extension workers to conduct independent or group educational projects in environments similar to those they face in their extension activities.

Training for extension workers in Ghana is provided by agricultural research institutions, universities and partner programmes and projects. There are five formal post-secondary agricultural colleges under MoFA where personnel are educated and trained for 3 years as agricultural technicians or officials in activities related to agriculture. There are also agri-cultural vocational institutes at Wenchi, Navorongo, and Aswansi that provide formal agricultural training to practicing and would be farmers ensuring immediate availability of skilled and trainable labour force. Extension and farmer training programmes rely on face-to-face teaching and learning through traditional training, demonstration plots and field days. Newer extension methods such as Farmer Field School are in use to avoid a top-down approach to effecting change. However these approaches tend to be slow, are small in scale and limited in coverage.