The lack of adequate storage facilities, however, has made it difficult for farmers to keep bumper crops for future sale. Anthony Adomako, a 1986 graduate of the Coady diploma program, is an agricultural extension worker with the Diocese of Sunyani. He has been showing peasant farmers new ways to store maize using local materials. He has also introduced them to new techniques to improve production and has set up demonstration projects in sheep rearing, poultry raising and beekeeping to provide farmers with practical advice on raising animals. As a result of the ongoing education program, local farmers have formed a co-operative to market their improved yields and have constructed new silos to store crops through price slumps and lean seasons.
Food is now available for local consumption and for sale at nearby markets.
Although relatively small, the changes have had a positive effect on the local economy and on the health and lives of needy families. In the neighbouring Diocese of Kumasi, members of a Coady-trained development team have set up four agricultural institutes in remote parts of the region to encourage young people to make their living from the land and to help them acquire the skills they need to become efficient farmers. The institutes provide practical hands-on agricultural training to young men and women drawn from surrounding villages each year. Most of the time is spent outside the classroom in the field, tending institute nurseries and gardens, and passing on newly-acquired skills to neighbouring farmers. In addition to providing much-needed agricultural extension services, the institutes also conduct special programs for illiterate farmers in the area.