The planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD) program is one of the government flagship program aimed at diversifying the country’s Agricultural export capacity to include other tree crops with equal economic values as cocoa. In view of that, The New Juaben North Municipal Assembly selected, nursed and distributed about 65 thousand palm seedlings to 262 farmers in the Municipality. The program was implemented in two phases. Phase one in 2019 and phase two in 2021. Phase one distributed 15,276 seedlings to 84 farmers and planted on 247 acres of land. The Municipal Planning and coordinating unit monitored the first phase of the PERD program. The monitoring activities included reviewing the executed in 2019 with the Department of Agriculture, and interviewing the project’s beneficiaries. Monitoring field visit was held on 8th and 9th June 2022. The following observation were made
• Majority of the beneficiaries were men
• Farmers were trained as part of the program implementation and were adopting the Good agriculture practices,
• All the farmers who received palm seedlings planted them, majority have matured palm trees with some of the palm tree have started fruiting
• Few of the farmers were not adhering to the required planting distance
• Very few farmers still have their palm trees at a very tender stage
The monitoring team recommended that, the farmers and the oil palm processors be trained by the standardizing authorities (Food and Drug and Ghana Standard Authority) so that they are able to produce oil palm that can meet international standard.
PLANTING FOR Export and Rural Development (PERD) program is a government flagship program aimed at diversifying the country’s Agricultural export capacity to include other tree crops with equal economic values as cocoa. The program has targeted six (6) crops aside Cocoa. The crops are coconut, rubber, cashew, oil palm, coffee and shea. The Planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD) program was launched by the Government in 2020. To execute the implementation of the project all Metropolitan Municipal District Assemblies were directed to select one of the crops and support farmers with seedlings certified improved seedlings, extension services, business support and regulatory mechanisms.
In view of that, The New Juaben North Municipal Assembly selected oil palm. This was based on the ecology of the Municipality. The Assembly nursed and distributed about 65 thousand palm seedlings to 262 farmers in the Municipality. The program was implemented in two phases. Phase one in 2019 and phase two in 2021. The phase one distributed 15,276 seedlings to 84 farmers and planted on 247 acres of land.
This is monitoring and evaluation report of the Phase one of the PERD program. The monitoring activities included reviewing the activities executed in 2019 with Department of Agriculture, and interviewing the project’s beneficiaries. Monitoring field visit was held on 8th and 9th June 2022.
The so-far state of achieving the project objectives was also evaluated, based mostly on the information gathered in the interviews. Also the corrective measures that are needed in order to fulfill the objectives and measures to sustain the gains of the projects were discussed.