Revamping Ghana’s Agriculture for job creation and poverty reduction
Agriculture, a main economic activity in Ghana, creates employment, determines the income levels and standards of living of many people, particularly those in the rural areas.
Agriculture in the country, which mainly involves food, animal and fish production, contributes to 34 per cent of Gross Domestic Product and plays a central role in promoting growth and poverty reduction.
Indeed, Ghana’s growth and poverty reduction is largely contingent on the success of the agriculture sector, an engine of growth in the national economy.
Ironically even though Ghana generally has favourable factors including, relatively reliable weather, abundant tract of fertile soils for the cultivation of variety of crops and labour, food insecurity and poverty still persist.
Food security means far more than having sufficient food to meet human needs on national basis.
In fact, it often has less to do with food availability than with access to food. Access is a hugely elusive and complex problem, which is complicated not only by low family incomes, but also by the lack of roads and the distribution infrastructure needed to move food swiftly from place to place.
Poverty and low standards of living of people in parts of rural Ghana to a large extent is a reflection of low agriculture production.
Ghana really needs a “green revolution”, which can be successful only if it is linked to ecological advances to promote food security and sustainable development.
Indeed, such transformation can result in productivity growth to salvage Ghanaian farmers out of the web of poverty, especially those in the rural areas of the Central, Upper West, Northern, and Upper East Regions.
This is why the release of $13 million by the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa, sponsored by Mr Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as individuals and organisations for instance, to support the agriculture sector in Ghana, should be welcome news to farmers in particular and all Ghanaian in general.
This, notwithstanding, the country cannot continue to rely largely on such donor supports and this requires the formulation of comprehensive policies and strategies, including support for research and increase investments in agriculture.
It is, therefore, heart-warming that various Governments have formulated policies to complement such initiatives, as exemplified by the establishment of the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) by the Mills administration.
SADA does not only seek to address the development gap between the northern and Southern parts of the country, but to also promote agriculture development in the beneficiary areas: Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions, as well as parts of the Volta and Brong Ahafo Regions.
Such interventions coupled with the commitment of farmers can help to boost agricultural productivity, profitability, and sustainability to ensure that families obtain food security.
Problems of irregular rainfall and irrigation systems, the lack of adequate knowledge on agriculture and labour due to rural-urban migration of the youth as farming would have to be tackled if agriculture is to strife in Ghana.
There is the need for the Government to formulate effective policies and legislations, to tackle the problem of land degradation and land tenure system, to make land easily accessible to farmers and investors.
Farmers should be educated to accept that increased agriculture production would to some extent depend on modern farming methods such as mixed-maize, cereal/root crop mixed and tree crop-based systems, and irrigated methods, based on rice, vegetables, rain-fed crops, cattle and poultry farming.
The Government should place emphasis on pest control, supply of farm inputs, improved crops and seeds during farming season at subsidised prices, provision of storage facilities to prevent post-harvest loses and increase investment in agriculture.
Agriculture scientists and experts should be supported to use Information and Communication Technology, such as internet, web-site and mobile phone to share information on agricultural best practices and weather forecasts or warnings with farmers towards increased food production.
More agriculture institutions such as the Tafo Cocoa Research Institute should be established across the country to articulate science and technology strategies and policies to promote agriculture.
Ghana needs increased agricultural productivity, improved food security and an enhanced sustainability of agro-ecosystems.
Science and technology undoubtedly can contribute to food security by introducing labour-saving technologies and better communications and also through an improved quality of food storage, processing, packaging and marketing.
The role of agriculture extension officers in national development cannot be overemphasised and the Government should support Agriculture Training Institutions to turn out more officers to assist farmers with farming techniques.
Government should increase its budget on agriculture to solve the myriad problems facing the agriculture sector.
Agriculture overtly would for along time remain a major economic activity because of its comparative advantage it has over other activities because of relatively cheap labour, fertile soils, simple methods, less capital intensive and favourable weather conditions among other.
There is the need to resuscitate the agriculture sector for sustainable food security, job creation, income generation and poverty reduction towards sustainable economic growth.
Source: GNA