Opoku Gakpo Writes: Attention NPP - Ghana Does Not Need More Farmers

Let me first say that it was refreshing hearing Minister Designate for Food and Agriculture Dr. Akoto Owusu Afriyie, outline the New Patriotic Party government’s ‘planting for food and jobs’ strategy at the University of Ghana on Monday. Not every idea in that policy suggestion is laden with a potential for success, but at least, we have a practical, clearly thought through plan to work with. It’s really never been the case in the past and this is obviously a good step.

Ghanaian farmers remain some of the most hardworking group of ‘professionals’ you will find anywhere in the world and I believe they deserve all the necessary support they can lay hands on. So, it’s a wonderful idea that farmers will get improved seeds, supply of fertilizers, provision of dedicated extension services and good market under this new strategic direction. My good friend Dr. Owusu Afriyie is even promising a new era of electronic agriculture. These ideas are fantastic, but more often than not, politicians have failed to match the tough promises with ‘cash from the vault.’ We hope the situation will be different this time around.

I also love the suggestion that government institutions and private companies like breweries and food processors will be encouraged to invest in plantations for food and raw material production.

But I have a few concerns about some aspects of the plan. Dr. Owusu Afriyie said: “the campaign is designed to encourage all citizens both urban and rural to take up farming as a full time or part time activity. It is intended to be structured along the lines of the erstwhile operation feed yourself programme of the 1970s.” He added: “Prisons, hospitals, schools, colleges and universities will be given the incentive to start their own farms.” I believe this is a very, very bad idea.

This ‘100 year old campaign’ to get everyone in Africa to take up farming as a profession to ensure food security is an outdated idea that has long outlived its usefulness.

I must admit that when I was a younger man, I championed that campaign too. Whilst pursuing a Bsc in Agricultural Biotechnology at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science at Technology, I worked on projects with Agro Mindset Organisation and Mondelez Cocoa Life, formerly Cadbury Cocoa Partnership, to encourage more young people to get into farming as a sustainable form of livelihood.

But the other day in church, Chancellor of the Central University, Rev Dr. Mensa Otabil drew attention to something very profound which got me re-thinking whether that is really the way to go if we want to feed ourselves. Dr. Otabil said: "I believe that a nation should not be encouraging everybody to be farmers. I don't think we need more than 5% of Ghanaians as farmers. All we need to do is to do it well so a few people can produce for all of us.”

I think Dr. Otabil was right. This country already has more than 55 percent of our population engaged in farming for their livelihoods. Do we really need a lot more of our people going into farming before we can achieve food security as the NPP’s ‘revived operation feed yourself strategy’ wants to do? That doesn’t sound progressive.

Again, a century ago, Ghana had forest reserves covering more than 8 million hectares of our land. Today, the country’s total forest cover stands at less than 1 million hectares. The destruction of these forests has mainly been due to farming and urbanisation. At a time when climate change is doing extra-ordinary damage to the lives of many across the world, what justification do we have to bring down more forests and create more farms?

Additionally, out of Ghana’s total land area of 24 million hectares, 14 million is estimated to be suitable for agricultural production. We have currently ploughed more than 60 percent of that for farming. Do we really want to continue expanding farming activities like this without thinking about what land will be available for use by future generations? I don’t think so.

The sad part of the story is that we are extremely inefficient in the use of the current land we are farming on. I have been reading MOFA’s agricultural sector progress report for the year 2015 and it points out that in the year 2015, farmers in Ghana produced an average of 1.92 tonnes of maize from each hectare of farmland. Their colleagues in the US are producing up to 8.5 tonnes of maize per hectare of farmland; more than fourfold of what the average Ghanaian farmer produces. And by the way, less than 5 percent of US citizens are engaged in farming, but they feed the world thanks to innovation in agric production, support for the sector by the American government and the goodwill of the American people to always put the interest of their country’s producers first.

So, if we cannot focus on being efficient with our production and be more productive in the kind of farming we do, on what basis do we want to push a policy that would exacerbate the pressure on limited available land, destroy the environment further and condemn the future of more young people to a profession of very uncertain future. All in the name of creating more jobs.

If we are efficient enough in production as our colleagues in the Western world are, we can grow enough food with less than 15 percent of our population engaged in agriculture. We may well need only about one-fourth of the current size of land we farm on to produce as much food as we grow now.

And one final point. Mind you, the law of demand and supply is clear that when there is high level of output and low demand, as will be the case when we have a lot more people engaged in farming, prices fall. The farmer always gets poorer when there is more than enough food in the system. In the absence of an effective market system, whenever there is glut, farmers will make losses, they will go out of business, they will get poorer and the nation loses.

We make too much noise about youth engaging in farming on this continent. Every single political party manifesto over the last 24 years and every national or continental agric initiative have been built on drawing more young people into agric production. But the evidence is that it’s clearly a misplaced priority.

You can disagree with me, but this is what I believe we need to do going forward. Let’s pull breaks on all the push to get more people engaged in agriculture. Let’s rather focus attention on making available the necessary resources, support and subsidies for current farmers to increase productivity. Let’s put a lot more attention on processing of the crops we produce into finished products, as I expect the NPP’s ‘One District One Factory’ policy to do. And let government initiate policies that will create good market and a fair price regime for our farmers.

But encouraging everyone in this country to go into farming… that is the bane of our continuous under development as a continent because the evidence is that the real sectors that create jobs for everyone are industry and services, not primary production. If the latter was the case, our gold mines and crude oil fields would have provided more than enough jobs for every single Ghanaian already.

May God bless our farmers. And may God bless the good people of Ghana.

By Joseph Opoku Gakpo / www.josephopokugakpo.wordpress.com