Farmers day and Child Farmers: a bother or a blessing?

Farming may be considered as the cultivation of primary produce and debated as the oldest profession of humanity. When God put man in the garden of Eden to “dress it and keep it”( Genesis 2:15), it may have been the most strategic divine responsibility given to humanity.

This responsibility, including the production of food and nutrition for the sustenance of humanity, requires utmost attention if it should achieve its goal of sustainability.

Yet, today, most farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are the poorest and most vulnerable populations on earth.

Peasant farming, including the labours of millions of African children, is a niche in agriculture policies and practices that calls for sufficient investment.

As Ghana marks another farmers day, we have opportunity to zero-in on the strategic involvement of children In agriculture.

Presently, there is the child labour scare which threatens the elimination of children from agriculture because adults have not provided adequate protection for children in the farming space.

It may not be surprising to note many young people shying away from farming because they perceive it as the poor man’s occupation.

Children in agriculture is a very good thing and must be cultivated to yield the potential dividends. Agriculture without child labour is possible: children must be adequately supervised to integrate farm work with school work in a manner that enhances intellectual and emotional intelligence. They must not be trapped in the ignorance that disconnects farming from intellectual prowess. This means at the household, neighbourhood, community and district governance level, parents, unit committee members and assembly men and women, religious and traditional leaders as well as district chief executives, coordinating directors and line-agency officials including labour, social welfare, education, health, human rights, agriculture and civic education professionals paid by the tax-payer must be made accountable to ensuring the protection of our children from child labour in agriculture.

Not every work done by the child is child labour. Children are allowed and must be guided to do farming activities that do not hinder them from quality schooling. Farm work should not stop them from doing school work and home work and extra studies that will give them extra performance so they can get genuine quality grades that will lead them into well-paid decent jobs and from them into business owners and global leaders.

But the Constitution of Ghana protects children with provisions such as Article 28 (2) which reaffirms the fundamental human rights of children to be protected from work that constitutes a threat to their health, education and development. This constitutional right is a human right that must be respected exercised and enforced. If adults don’t protect children adequately, poverty cannot be eliminated in the future.

Farm work that does not allow a child to have adequate time to attend school, pay attention in class, perform well in grades and conduct and undermines intellectual prowess is detrimental to the child’s well being. Is that what we want?

Farming is business, big business because it provides opportunity for agri-business through adequate investment in agri-processing betting first level.

Children working as unpaid labour in small-holder family farms to help take care of the household should be guided to see farming as big business. This means their contributions must be measured and rewarded adequately. We see them on the highways selling their snails, crabs, plantains and yams but we bargain until we can buy their wares at the least cost, exploiting their vulnerability. Is this okay?

Farming is business means that children who help thee households in farm work must be given the best opportunities in education and school. They must be guided by their parents or caregivers to connect what they do in the farm with what they learn in school. But many such parents are not thus informed because they too may have suffered as children who did not have the opportunity to understand the integration of intellect and organic practice: the linkage between cerebellum and farm work. This is why the State must be up and doing about quality civic and adult education. We need more social services for vulnerable parents and care workers. How much money was allocated to this in the 2026 budget and how much is being given to local government authority to meet this fundamental need?

Unless we provide qualitative assistance to peasant farmers who use their children in child labour to produce the food and nutrition that keeps our country alive and well, we will continue to recycle poverty on the wheels of agriculture and what God designed as a blessing for humanity may elude us for a long long time.

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