GHANA’S economy is largely agrarian, accounting for about 60 per cent of the workforce, especially in rural Ghana. From all indications, the agricultural sector will continue to play a key role in the economy for some time to come.
Over the past years, however, the growth of the agricultural sector in terms of its contribution to the economy has not been very encouraging.
However, year in and year out, our political leaders profess that that sector is the pivot around which our economy revolves, without providing the necessary logistics to leap-frog the sector to its proper place in the national economic scheme.
Happily, Vice-President John Mahama has attributed the country’s current economic successes to the government’s prudent policies and investments in agriculture which have, to a large extent, helped in bringing down inflation and stabilising other economic indicators.
For the DAILY GRAPHIC, the Veep’s comments only go to buttress the point we have had cause to elaborate time without number that a comprehensive strategy in the agricultural sector has the potential to lift the economy from its dependence syndrome.
By a comprehensive policy, we mean a programme that addresses the challenges from the land tenure system through planting to the value chain processes that deliver value for money. This is exactly what our dear nation needs.
The example of the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) which is to address the challenges in the agricultural sector and also serve as a model for dealing with this sector cannot be lost on us.
Certainly, the challenges in this sector are enormous, but they can be surmounted. The DAILY GRAPHIC believes that it takes more than political will and passion to support the agricultural sector to be at the forefront of our economic recovery programme.
It is not that the politicians and policy makers do not know the answers to these challenges; it is the enormity of the challenges that seems to defy solution.
But the solution lies in pragmatic policies that can change the status quo, so that the challenges can be seen as opportunities to promote growth in the agricultural sector.
The linkages of the agricultural sector to industrialisation, employment generation, economic development and sustainable growth are such that any government committed to the development of its people will fully commit itself to pursuing the right policies to overcome our dependence on donors.
It is also important to establish a fund that supports the agricultural sector to deliver on its mandate of providing food at all times for Ghanaians.
The DAILY GRAPHIC appeals to the government to put a ring around some of the donor funds which can be channelled through specific banks for on-lending to those interested in farming.
Our continuous dependence on the hoe and the cutlass, which in our context is euphemistic for peasant farming, cannot hold the key to increased agricultural production.
The youth of the country are drifting to the cities in droves because there are no attractions in the countryside to motivate them to take over from our ageing farmers. The courageous ones who brave the odds are regularly confronted by an unfriendly land tenure system, lack of credit and late delivery of inputs, resulting in poor yields from their toils.
The Daily Graphic is convinced that until these challenges are addressed, our country will continue to beg for food handouts from even countries that don’t have arable lands.
We should bear in mind that our esteem is reduced in the comity of nations so long as we continue to beg others to feed us. We have the capacity to produce to feed ourselves and even export the surplus and so it is about time the necessary interventions were put in place to change the impression that we cannot feed ourselves.
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