Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto
A former Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has stated that the agricultural sector must be at the forefront if the country is to achieve a transformation agenda and engineer the necessary economic rebound.
Speaking during a forum with editors and senior journalists at his campaign office in Accra over the weekend, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer hopeful said if Ghana would refrain from inadequate budgetary allocation to the Agric sector, the country could accrue more than the 3billion dollar bailout it is seeking from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“Agriculture, by far, has the biggest potential to turn around the fortunes of this country. It is not gold or oil or any other resource. The potential is so huge; we have a very fortunate situation and you may not be aware. There is something I’ve learned about Ghanaian farmers; you give them the smallest incentives and they will run a mile with it and that’s a resource we need to exploit to the earth,” he stated.
In his view, if the government could exploit the willingness of the Ghanaian farmer, the country will be great and economically robust.
Fortunes
Dr. Afriyie Akoto bemoaned that amid the dwindling fortunes of the agricultural sector, much focus has been shifted to oil, gas and gold as the perceived game changer of the economy.
He reiterated that it can only take the right priorities on the country’s agriculture to help Ghana attain the needed economic transformation.
“This is because no major economic transformation can take place without the agricultural sector being fixed first,” he said.
He lauded the Akufo-Addo administration’s commitment to transforming the agriculture sector but insisted more can be done in a far better way.
He stressed that it is time to eliminate the challenges facing the sector, restore its lost glory, reduce post-harvest losses and high import bills and help salvage the economy from the shackles of external assistance.
He added that agriculture is the mainstay of most developing economies, underpinning their food security, export earnings and rural development. Yet, he bemoaned that agricultural production for the domestic and export markets has lagged behind, with growth in per capita output declining in recent times.
PFJ
In Ghana’s situation, the former Member of Parliament for Kwadaso in the Ashanti Region said the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) has been an eminent success, even with the severe headwinds that have confronted it and provides a good model for efforts at enhancing agricultural production in Ghana.
“Look at what our farmers have done with the PFJ by providing them subsidies, seeds and fertilizers. And it is not all the farmers. In 2018, I conducted an agricultural census to count the number of farmers in Ghana which has never been done for 38 years.
“We came up with 3.1 million professional farmers in this country. Planting for Food and Jobs by 2021 had benefitted 1.7 million professional farmers – that is half of the farmers’ population and even with half, look at what has happened to Ghana’s agriculture,” he said.
In 2020, the 7.3 per cent growth in the agriculture sector exceeded the services sector’s 0.75 as industry contracted by 2.5 per cent.
Ghana’s overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth for that year was 0.5 per cent, with the country suffering its first economic recession in nearly four decades because of the effects of COVID-19.
Phenomenal growth
In 2021, he pointed out that agriculture recorded the highest growth in the 4th Republic, which was 8.4 per cent. This, he indicated, was “in the eye of the storm of COVID-19 in the year 2020. “When all countries were down, Ghana’s agricultural sector growth was 7.4%,” he added.
“The Planting for Food and Jobs was working and kept Ghana going. The Ghanaian farmer is a resource sitting and waiting to be exploited and for me, the future of this country is to give incentives to these farmers for them to produce the surpluses and foreign exchanges to finance our industrial development, our education, our hospitals, health and infrastructure, and all those things. We can do it,” he stated.
He stressed the need to develop a critical strategy to recapitalise agriculture, investing more heavily in the sector and in programmes to develop rural economic and social infrastructure.
That, he indicated, will require a coherent and comprehensive vision of agricultural and rural development by designing, implementing and constantly reviewing a series of priority and carefully timed measures necessary to boost the agricultural sector.
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