I am Richmond Adomako from Ghana West Africa, I started my basic education at age seven (7) my father at that time was a produce buying clerk with produce buying company of Ghana, the products was Cocoa, so through out my childhood I have been living in rural communities between Ashanti region and Brong Ahafo region in Ghana. I remember when I close from school and follow my parents on our plantain and cassava farms. Life was not easy at the village, even though my father was government worker, my father children were 13 with three different women, as a result, catering for this number of heavy burden. But i must recommend my father for being industrious, he was able to send all of us to school from basic school to secondary and even tertiary. depending on our individual academic performance.

I happen to be one of the lucky ones who managed to climb the academic ladder up to the tertiary level.

I still remember like yesterday when we help our father on his farms during vacations and sometimes on Saturdays.

With all these ups and downs i graduated with HND Marketing from Sunyani Polytechnic in the year 2006. After my mandatory national service, I managed to further my education in Kwame University of Science and Technology. I am currently working, but to make ends meet, I do farming alongside in other to be able to cater for the family size of Six.

Based on my background, and living in farming communities, i grew up with my interest on farming. my business is farming , cassava, plantain, and vegetable small scale farming. Among my farm produce; are vegetable which is tomatoes, pepper and some times Okra.

Some times the vegetable meet higher demand, this is during dry season and the supply of this products is limited due to inadequate rain fall pattern. sometimes i have to rely on streams and other sources of water for watering my vegetables.

It is not easy, the demand sometimes decreases during heavy rain season, again a lot of people join the vegetable farming during the rainy season thereby increasing supply which subsequently lead to decrease in prices, this is where some of the vegetables go bad and rot, this is very common with the tomatoes.

There is a challenge in the agricultural sector in the developing countries like ours which has to do with preservation and processing of farm produce, mostly, the vegetables are perishable if there is no ready market.

But besides the trough and peaks which exist in almost every industry, at the end of the day farming put food on the table and my family get fresh vegetable to feed on.

Some of the proceeds or profit from vegetable sales facilitate immensely in catering for my kids education and paying utility bills. The recouped profit is sometimes reinvested in the business for expansion. Even though as a new comer, the Zidisha Lending system will not permit higher borrowing for the beginning, i will settle for this initial amount with the hope to increase the loan facility as and when I qualify for higher amount. I hope and pray one day i will get there and to enable me to become an export of vegetables.

I will use this money to increase my Tomato farming by buying weedicide. This time I will be able to buy about four tins of weedicide which cost approximately $3.00 each for my tomato farming. There are also some pest that destroy the tomato and I have to buy additional pesticide to control the pest.

Even though do I weed manually from time to time, it makes the work more easier and faster to use the weedicide.

After this, my next plan is to get a pumping machine that will facilitate pumping of water from the nearby stream and to water the vegetables. even though there no enough capital for that at the moment, i know one day I will get there

In the near future I will be considering acquiring sprinklers for watering purposes.

I really want to concentrate on the tomato since the demand is very high and it fetch me good income, some of this income is some time spend on my kids education as well as reinvesting in the farming.

The family also enjoy the fresh vegetable.