Rozet Royal Enterprise is an agribusiness that produces and aggregates groundnut, maize, rice and soybean. The company operates in six districts and municipalities, namely: Savelugu Municipal, Nanton, Mion, Gushegu Municipal, Kumbungu and Sagnarigu Municipal. Rozet Royal has been supporting rural farmers in various ways to enhance their cropping yield and farm productivity. Currently, it works closely with 3,366 farmers, of which about 57% are women. The average farm size for each farmer is about 2 acres. The company was awarded best women in agribusiness under the Africa Lead project in 2018. The partnership with the MADE programme was entered into in 2017, and the company has since aggregated 5,000 MT of maize and 3,500 MT of soybean.
MADE interventions
- Recruited, trained and deployed 10 Farm Enterprise Advisors (FEAs) and one FEA manager who assisted in the distribution of farm inputs and followed up on all stages of the farming season, from planting to harvest.
- Facilitated links with tractor services. Ploughing service support is offered only to women farmers because of the challenge of accessing the service at the appropriate time for early planting. Rozet Royal connected 500 smallholder farmers to mechanisation service providers and then bore the cost for the services rendered.
- Increased access to inputs, credit, and markets. Cash loans were accorded to 1,002 farmers to buy inputs.
- Provided demonstrations on good agricultural practices (land preparation, planting and how to manage post-harvest losses).
- Facilitated/strengthened commercial partnerships with other enterprises. The commercial relationship established with OCP and Intercontinental Ghana Limited gave the company access to fertilisers on credit. Farm enterprise advisors were also trained in the input protocol for OCP products as well as good agricultural practices. At the level of output markets, the relationship established with Avnash provided a secure market for rice farmers.
Impacts
- Increased smallholder outreach over a three-year period from 2,400 farmers to the current figure of 3,366 farmers.
- Increased understanding of good agricultural practices and the proper application of agro-inputs through training organised for farmers on demonstration farms.
- Facilitated timely application of inputs.
- Increased yields. The most widely adopted good agricultural practices included row planting or recommended planting distance. At least 75% of the beneficiary farmers who adopted the row planting technique experienced an increase in yield for maize from 3 to 10 bags (100 kg) per acre and rice from 7 to 15 bags (100 kg) per acre, as compared to those who did not apply this method.
