Resilience through the 2024 drought, great farmer feedback, and working for more growth in 2025.
Entry into the new year seems a good time for all of us in the OFA team to remind ourselves and share why we are doing what we do, recall the highlights of the last year, thank our partners, and set our aims for 2025. So here goes….
Why OFA?
More than half of Africa’s workforce are farmers, and the majority of these are poor smallholder farmers. Giving farmers big increases in their farm profitability can therefore give huge development benefits. OFA can do this sustainably in financial and environmental terms. Our mission is to catalyze doubling of farmer profits across Africa. Fully achieved this would add $300bn to Africa’s GDP focussed in poorer rural farming communities, transforming the continents development trajectory and that of hundreds of millions of Africans.
OFA and crop drought resilience
Many of you will be well aware that 2024 was a difficult year in the agricultural sector in Ghana, due to the prolonged dry spell. However, due in no small part to OFA’s benefits for crop drought resilience, our sales still increased sharply. The OFA team are grateful to our farmers and partners for continuing to trust in OFA despite the challenges of the dry spell, which meant many farmers, particularly in the north of Ghana, simply didn’t plant; and we are even happier to hear many confirmations that trust was well placed.
The 2024 OFA Forum
Our annual Forums are a key opportunity for us to share experience, research and ideas between all those working with OFA. The 2024 Forum was held in December, and was in Tamale for the first time, which proved an excellent location. Our Forums bring together farmers and farmer associations, NGOs and development partners, policy advisers and officials working in agriculture, and researchers, who have an interest in OFA
The theme was “OFA, crop drought resilience, and farm profits”. We very much appreciated a warm welcome from Dean Terry Ansah of University of Development Studies, our Forum hosts. This was followed by a series of insightful presentations on OFA – copies of the slides are available on request. But perhaps the most gratifying part of all was the positive testimonies on OFA from many farmers. A dozen of these farmer testimonies are included in this 9 minute highlights video .
The Forum included slide presentations from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Savannah Agricultural Research Institute scientists Dr Ophelia Asirifi Amoako, on trials of OFA’s benefits used as a booster for reduced amounts of inorganic fertilizer for maize on poor soils, where it greatly increased profitability, and Dr Edwin Akley, on trials of OFA’s benefits for cowpea, where OFA increased profitability 400%. These two presentations were based on the papers the scientists published in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals (these papers are available on request from us).
Other highlights included a presentation on research from HJA Africa’s chief agronomist Gilbert Osei, assessing OFA’s drought resilience benefits, in particular for tomato and rice, and presentations from two of our key development partners Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) and SNV (the Dutch development agency) who are helping more of their farmer networks benefit from OFA. There was also a presentation on OFA’s benefits for cashew.
There was a range of coverage of the Forum on radio and TV channels, and some sample coverage can be viewed on UTV and on Sangani TV and on Zaa TV
Other 2024 highlights
We were delighted that soon after the Forum, Joy TV News, highlighted OFA.s crop drought resilience benefits importance given climate change
Looking further back in 2024, we were delighted to receive a National consumer choice award for OFA as Agro-input of the year on 25 October at the Accra Movenpick hotel, adding to several previous awards for OFA; and to be joined at the presentation event by our key partners MEDA.
We were also honoured to be included in the book “The Commonwealth at 75”, which highlighted 75 impactful businesses from across the Commonwealth, launched in London on 9 October.
We were pleased that OFA was selected to be shown to farmers on the Ministry of Food and Agriculture’s Planting for Food and Jobs portal GhAAP.
OFA’s big benefits for tree crops
During 2024, whilst sales of OFA to farmers of staple crops (cereals, legumes, tubers and vegetables) have continued to increase, we have also seen a surge in OFA use by commercial tree crop farmers, who can get particularly large benefits from OFA.
For example, for mango, OFA is effective in increasing floration, combating anthracnose and stopping the potentially devastating BBS (bacterial black spot) which can lead to loss of up to 90% of fruits (we can provide a paper by Dr Hongar of University of Ghana on OFA’s effectiveness against BBS in his field trials, on request). OFA for mango typically costs just 400 cedis an acre for the season – far cheaper than alternative solutions to mango farmer challenges, and with the added advantage over many others that OFA is organic. With typical mango revenue per acre of 25,000 cedis, the potential returns from using OFA for mango farmers are extraordinarily high, as many mango farmers are proving.
We have similarly great feedback from cocoa farmers using OFA. They report big yield increases (up to 100%) and solving key challenges such as cocoa black pod disease. We are approaching our third anniversary of awaiting Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana registration of OFA for cocoa which will allow advertising of OFA for cocoa use. We hope to receive this soon, Following CRIGs approval, we will be able to promote OFA for cocoa and give a huge boost to Ghana’s key cocoa industry at this challenging time.
We are also getting very positive feedback from increasing numbers of coconut and cashew farmers using OFA.
As an impact first company, our main focus for OFA will continue to be helping smallholder farmers make much more profit, sustainably in financial and environmental terms, but we are delighted to also be able to do so much for commercial farmers, and through them for Ghana’s economy.
A big thank you to all our partners!
We are deeply grateful to a multitude of partners who have helped us bring OFA to being a leading organic input in Ghana in just 6 years, and I cannot mention them all here. Here are some of our key partners of 2024: the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research who have helped us in a range of ways, from hosting our offices and providing quality assurance and technical advice, to carrying out important agronomic research studies on OFA; GIZ, the German development agency, which provided a grant that has underpinned our progress in 2024; development partners MEDA, SNV and Presbyterian Agricultural Services, who have helped us reach many more farmers with OFA; brand ambassadors Anim Addo of Ghana’s most popular farming programme, Ayeeko on UTV, and Portia Gban, a commercial soya farmer and women’s advocate; various officers in the Ministry of Food and Agriculture; and of course numerous agro-input dealers, farmer associations and farmers that supported more use of OFA and shared its benefits with others in 2024.
And our aspirations for 2025
We will continue working hard to make sure many more farmers hear of the big increases in profits they can achieve through using OFA, whilst also mitigating their climate change risks and delivering big environmental and climate mitigation benefits. As an impact first company our key goal is helping farmers do better and so driving development. We estimate that OFA delivered at least $20m in increased income in farming communities in 2024, and we aim to double that to at least $40m in 2025, with much more to follow.
We believe as the big impact and the great potential of OFA to transform both our crop yields and the quality of life of our farming communities through increasing incomes becomes clearer and clearer, other key partners will join us in 2025 to help us deliver even faster. Please reach out to me if you are interested in working with us.
We wish you a happy, prosperous and healthy 2025.