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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo during his swearing-in
Food production has increased dramatically and a conscious effort has been made to improve the standard of living of our farmers, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said during his swearing-in as President of the Republic and Commander-in-Chief from Ghana. Armed Forces, Thursday January 7, 2021.
He said the newly built warehouses scattered across the country store surpluses for export to neighboring countries and the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) program has become the real stone on which the successful future of Ghanaian agriculture.
President Akufo-Addo, who entered his second term when he was sworn in, vowed to be concerned about building pathways that would create jobs for young people.
“The past four years have taught me that Ghanaians will no longer accept poverty and destitution as their share, but rather are determined to work to chart a course of growth and development for themselves.
“Building a strong economy and undergoing a structural transformation towards value-added activities, which will generate jobs for our young people and improve their standard of living, will be the main concern of my second term,” he said.
Minister of Agriculture
Food and Agriculture Minister Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto revealed last year that of the 80 warehouses under construction across the country, 51 of them were ready by November 2020.
During Nation Building’s series of updates in November, on the theme, “Becoming the West African Food Basket,” he said the government has decided to build 80 warehouses across the country.
“I’m happy to report that of the 80, 51 are ready to be handed over to me. We have inherited a warehouse capacity of 34,000 metric tonnes and we are able to add a capacity of 80,000 metric tonnes, ”he said.
He said the government had given 300 pickups to extension workers to enable them to help farmers with best farming practices to improve their yields.
Dr Akoto said the government was determined to ensure food security in the country; hence the investment, adding that the government intends to make horticulture a major source of foreign exchange earnings.
“We want to make horticulture a major source of foreign exchange earnings for Ghana. We want to change the whole narrative and we will export more. We can do it, ”he said.
Plant for food and employment
One of the transformative interventions in the agricultural sector is the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) program launched in 2017 and designed to address the myriad problems facing the agricultural sector remains the major program to modernize the sector.
The objectives of the program are: to ensure timely and adequate availability of selected food crops through improved productivity; providing employment opportunities for teeming unemployed youth; and create general awareness that all formal workers have either farms or vegetable gardens.
As of July last year, a total of 1.5 million farmers were enrolled in the program, an increase from the initial enrollment number of 202,000 farmers in the year it was established.
To improve food production in the aftermath of COVID-19 and allow more farmers to access inputs, 300,000 more farmers have been enrolled in the program, increasing the number of beneficiaries from the original target of 1.2 million at 1.5 million currently.
Ghana Agribusiness Chamber (CAG) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Anthony Morrison said the PFJ has served the agricultural sector from a marketing perspective and has also highlighted issues in the sector such as the challenges and prospects.
He said that while it helped create jobs, the kind of bite he needed to enter the economy after three years was not yet felt.
“This is a social intervention mechanism for the agricultural sector and its model was not properly designed to create the jobs needed for the pro-poor populations. On the contrary, it has come to help a certain level of mid-sized commercial farmers more than the targeted people, ”he said.
He said most of the smallholder farmers the policy was to help did not actually experience the benefits, making it difficult to examine a major impact.
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