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Roadmap to Ghana’s food security

Feature Article King Mohammed VI
MAY 5, 2016 LISTEN
King Mohammed VI

Food security and climate change has become a major challenge to most African countries. In Ghana, about 1.2 million people, representing 5 percent of the population, are food insecure, according to data from the World Food Programme (WFP).

The Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions are the most affected with 34 per cent, 15 per cent and 10 per cent of the respective populations affected.

It did not use to be so, however.
Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah attempted to use agricultural wealth as a springboard for the country's overall economic development.

Similarly, the Rawlings government initiated the first phase of the Economic Recovery Program (ERP) in 1984, with agriculture identified as the economic sector that could rescue Ghana from a financial ruin.

Still, beginning with the drop in commodity prices in the late 1960s, Ghanaian farmers have been faced with fewer incentives to produce. Farmers have also had to deal with increasingly expensive inputs, such as fertilizer, because of overvaluation of the cedi.

Presently, the contribution of agriculture, hitherto the backbone of Ghana's economy, to the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has dropped by an alarming 12.8 per cent from 31.8 per cent in 2009 to a mere 19 per cent as of September 2015.

Specifically, it dropped 29.8 per cent in 2010; 25.3 per cent (2011); 22.9 per cent(, 2012); 22.4 per cent (2013); 21.5 per cent (2014).

It dropped from 31.8 per cent in 2009 to 29.8 per cent in 2010, representing 2 per cent GDP contribution lost. In 2011, agriculture's contribution dropped by 4.5 per cent to 25.3 per cent while 2012 recorded a 2.4 per cent drop to 22.9 per cent.

The year 2013 recorded a 0.5 per cent drop in the contribution of agriculture from 22.9 per cent in 2012 to 22.4 per cent in 2013.

The contribution of the agric sector to GDP growth recorded further decline of 0.9 per cent in 2014, and as of September 2015, the sector had lost another 0.4 per cent of its contribution to GDP.

The contribution of the agriculture sector is likely to drop further in 2016 as government has cut its 2016 expenditure on the sector by GHC40 million despite growth in the sector stalling to 0.04 per cent this year, when government had targeted 3.6 per cent growth.

This year, government's budgeted expenditure on the agricultural sector is GHC395.19 million while for 2016, GHC355.14 million has been budgeted, indicating a 10.1 per cent decrease.

By the end of September 2015, GHC91.54 million had been spent out of the GH0395.19 million budgeted.

Out of the GHC91.54 million spent, about GH082.57 million of this actual sector expenditure, representing 90.21 per cent, was spent on poverty-focused expenditures.

In 2015, 90,000mt of fertilizer, out of a target of 180,000mt, was procured and distributed to farmers countrywide under the Fertiliser Subsidy Programme.

For 2016, a total of GHC355.14 million has been allocated for this sector. About GHC302.46 million of this allocation, representing 85.17 per cent, is to be spent on the Fertiliser Subsidy Programme and the Agricultural Mechanisation Service Centres, among others.

The Ghana Statistical Service estimates that the sector will grow at an average of 3.3 per cent between 2016 to 2018, indicating that the sector's future remains far from bright as services and industry look to narrow agriculture's contribution to GDP.

But Morocco presents an example that Ghana could borrow a leaf from. Faced with similar food security challenges, the country has had different outcomes that should be of interest to the former Gold Coast.

Confronted with a choice between change and political and economic inertia in his deeply traditional kingdom, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI fifteen years ago, set his country on the course of becoming a stable, peaceful Arab nation, through deft economic policies.

Key among these was the green plan, which created 900 agricultural projects with an investment of US$4 billion. The plan offered intensive programs for the benefit of the small farmers in order to modernize the agriculture and develop the production, together with the evaluation of the agriculture production and the development of rural areas. In fact, the Moroccan green plan supported about 800,000 small farmers and improved the living conditions of about 3 million persons in rural areas.

“The Green Morocco Plan has greatly improved farmers' incomes and reduced poverty in rural areas” said Aziz Akhannouch, minister of agriculture and fishery in the opening of the eighth edition of the Agriculture Debate in Meknes. Indeed, the share of the population suffering from malnutrition dropped from around 7.1 per cent in 1990 to 4.9 per cent in 2015.

Following guidelines from the King Mohammed VI, the agriculture department became actively involved in the formulation of a new agricultural development strategy that sought bring a new dynamism able to withstand the profound changes facing the global food system.

Irrigated agriculture, thereafter, became part of the national and regional economy as a lift of wealth and job creation.

As a result, though irrigated agriculture in Morocco occupies only 15 per cent of the cultivated area, it contributes with around 45 per cent on average of the agricultural added value and accounts for 75 per cent of agricultural exports. This contribution is more important in the years of drought where production of rainfed land is severely affected. On average the irrigated sector contributes with 99 per cent for sugar production, 82 per cent for vegetables, 100 per cent for citrus fruit, 75 per cent for fodder and 75 per cent for milk. In addition, this sector provides almost 120 million working days per year, or about 1 million 65 thousand jobs, including 250,000 permanent. Furthermore, there is the improvement of farmers' incomes, which have increased by 5-13 times depending on the perimeters, and the opening up access to other municipal public services such as drinking water, electrification, etc., as well as the significant impact on upstream areas of public works, industry and services, and downstream in the agribusiness sector.

Morocco’s plan is to double the long-term added value in agriculture through the creation of 1.5 million jobs by 2020. Morocco green plan is at the heart of the country's agricultural strategy, and aims to expand opportunities for small and big farmers that will improve competition and economic development in rural areas. The World Bank approved on March 2013 a loan from the Development of US 203 million dollars, a policy to promote the modernization of the agricultural sector in Morocco in the framework of accompanying the Morocco green plan since its launch in 2008. The first loan of this kind had already been approved in March 2011 in favor of Morocco. The objective was to support key reforms envisaged in the national plan to strengthen domestic markets to help small producers, strengthen agricultural services and to improve the distribution of irrigation water.

As part of its support of Morocco green plan, the World Bank has worked closely with other donors. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provided technical support for the reform of local abattoirs, the Belgian Development Agency (BTC) that contributed to the financing of an economic analysis on irrigation sector reform, and the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The institution of the World Bank provides finance to the private sector, and it has funded work aimed at improving the legal and institutional framework of wholesale markets.

The field of agricultural production is linked to land ownership structure, relationship to the land, powers, status of schools in rural areas, the quality of public services in villages. Morocco green plan is defined as a break with the past and as a vision that wants to create sustainable and equitable relationship between two worlds and two realities of the agricultural sector. This is meant to integrate medium and small farmer in the cycle of emancipation through the valuing the land working which is also a national unity cement in its deepest meaning.

The department of agriculture considers as priorities the national agricultural promotion and its integration in the international environment. It undertakes a series of actions to strengthen cooperation relations with partners of the Kingdom in the world. Major actions are so engaged in promoting national expertise through the development of South-South cooperation through tripartite or quadripartite agreements and the development of inter-institutional and inter-linkages through direct agreements signed with the Ministries of Agriculture in some countries.

With its 32,987,206 people, Morocco is the 38th largest country in the world by population; and, the 58th largest country in the world by area with 446,550 square kilometers.

Sultan Mohammed V, the current monarch's grandfather, organized the new state as a constitutional monarchy and in 1957 assumed the title of king. King Mohammed VI in early 2011 responded to the spread of pro-democracy protests in the region by implementing a reform program that included a new constitution, passed by popular referendum in July 2011, under which some new powers were extended to parliament and the prime minister but ultimate authority remains in the hands of the monarch. In November 2012, the Justice and Development Party - a moderate Islamist party - won the largest number of seats in parliamentary elections, becoming the first Islamist party to lead the Moroccan Government.

Today, life expectancy of the average Moroccan is 76.51 while in Ghana it is 65.75.

Taking a leaf from Morocco to guarantee the food security of her people may not be a bad idea for Ghana.

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