ONE’S inability to feed oneself reduces one to rely on others for survival, and through such precarious dependence personal freedom and independence is lost. This also applies to nations.
Farming is not only one of the oldest professions of man but also one of the most important, as it results in the provision of food which sustains and guarantees life for both humans and animals.
It is little wonder, therefore, that food is listed as the topmost item on the table of necessities or wants of man and, accordingly, recognised globally as such through the global covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
In developing nations such as Ghana, farmers have had to work under very difficult, in some cases oppressive, conditions.
In many parts of tropical rural Africa, the hoe and the cutlass or other very simple old-fashioned implements are still the key tools for agricultural production.
This aside, farmers are virtually dependent on the weather for the production of food and cash crops, as well as livestock, for domestic consumption and for export.
These, together with the lack of guaranteed markets and prices for their produce and the absence of any viable system of insurance to cushion them against negative developments, have combined to make the profession a hazardous and risky one indeed.
As if these difficulties are not enough, the conditions of life for most farmers are not anything to write home about.
They are mostly consigned to living in rural and at best semi-urban areas where the basic necessities of life, such as clean and potable water, clinics and schools, motorable roads and so on, are absent.
The story has been told many times over of how, as a result of these oppressive living conditions, farmers have contracted water-borne diseases, with no access to modern medicare, cannot educate their children and themselves to the highest possible level as their talents will allow them and have looked on helplessly as the crops they have toiled to produce have got rotten because of the lack of motorable roads to transport them to areas where there is ready market for them.
All these difficulties notwithstanding, our hardworking farmers, unlike other categories of working people, have never threatened, let alone carried out, a strike to starve all of us into getting the government to address their plight.
They have continued the hard and relatively less rewarding work every day in order to ensure that we all get food to eat at reasonable prices and with all the relevant nutrients preserved.
We are happy that the government, in recognition of these immense contributions of our farmers, has instituted a national day to recognise and honour their hard work.
Today being that occasion, we wish to join millions of our countrymen and women to salute our hardworking, dedicated and patriotic farmers and to say “Ayekoo” to all of them for a good job done.
We are aware that the government has taken and is still taking steps, such as procuring more tractors, combine harvesters, power tillers, subsidised fertilisers, etc and lately instituting insurance and housing schemes to motivate our farmers to produce more.
We also recognise and applaud the government’s recent move, as contained in the budget, to promote the local rice, poultry and livestock industries and we believe our farmers will once again rise up to the challenge so that within the next few years we will not only be self-sufficient in these items and thus save the $900 million we use to import them but also become net exporters to earn more income for the nation.
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