Have you considered place of land in agriculture production?
If what ministers designated for various sectors say at their vetting is anything to go by, then Mr Eric Opoku, the Food and Agriculture Minister-designate, has given a hint at the intention of the Mahama administration to boost agriculture, for that matter, food production and security.
He explains that the government would implement programmes to make agriculture attractive to Ghanaians, including providing extension officers to farmers, creating market for their produce, and establishing mini-processing centres closer to farms.
The icing on the cake is the government’s intention to revive the ‘Operation Feed Yourself’ concept initiated by General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong in 1972, to boost domestic food production and consumption, particularly to increase meal portions and nutrition to students. For the benefit of those who didn’t listen to Mr Opoku, while at Parliament’s Appointments Committee vetting or not read what he said, here are some excerpts:
A) Every household will be encouraged to own a home garden;
B) There will be institutional farming under which second-cycle schools in this country will be made to own a farm; and
C) The government would give incentives to religious organisations which are into farming to increase their financial resources to the agricultural sector to boost production, which would be connected to processing companies and markets.
Mr Opoku then asserts that if nothing at all, the people should take advantage of the country’s rich soil to produce the basic vegetables needed in homes.
The ideas put out are lofty and The Ghanaian Times encourages them but not losing sight of the conditions prevailing in the 1970s and now.
In sum, we can talk about the attitude of the Ghanaian people towards farmlands, farming and the environment in general; the amount of land available; and the quantity of food needed vis-à-vis the population at the time and the taste of the people.
The Ghanaian Times wishes to remind the present government that the Acheampong regime supported its Operation Feed Yourself (OFY) with subsidised farm inputs, access to credit facilities and duty-free importation of agricultural machinery.
Also, though a military government, the Acheampong administration managed to whip up the enthusiasm of the people to embrace the initiative with backyard gardens, and farms, both small and large scale, to the extent that the country was officially declared self-sufficient in rice production in 1974.
In essence, The Ghanaian Times wishes to remind Mr Opoku of an uphill task he is going to perform and expected to show result for.
He has to help fight environmental degradation, including illegal mining (galamsey) as it renders arable land unsuitable for farming.
He is also going to be confronted with how to cause the people to develop enthusiasm for the OPY in the present time.
Can he, for example, convince urban dwellers who have paved their compounds with concrete or tiles to remove them to create space for gardening?
He has considered the difficulty of access to land for farming by some people willing to farm due to ‘hijacking’ of land by the so-called estate developers?
Ghana is an agrarian country and when this estate-development reared its ugly or beautiful head, it should have prompted successive government to be proactive enough to buy tracts of arable land and reserve them solely for farming.
Today, some chiefs in particular and other custodians of lands are denying present generation and those yet unborn the access to family lands by selling them to developers.
It must be noted that agriculture production could only be boosted with land and so there is the need for land management in the country, and the government must lead that cause.