By: UTCHE OKWUOSAH
Photo: Traveler2Traveler
The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) aims to end hunger and “ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and vulnerable people, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round by 2030.”
Interestingly, agriculture ranks as number two on the list of the SDG’s 17 goals targeted by the world for assured global development. By implication of the value and importance of agriculture to both health and economic development of the world, it invariably means that getting agriculture right provides the wherewithal, not just for providing the targeted “sufficient food” for all but, also, for the maximum exploitation of its capacity to supply all the middle income economies’ need for their industrial development. Not surprising, then, it comes second on the list of 17 global concerns.
A report by ReliefWeb, a humanitarian information service provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), shows that food crisis situation in Ghana worsened in 2022, and even deteriorated in 2023.
“The number of individuals in food crisis surged from 560,000 in 2021 to 823,000 in 2022, marking a 47% increase in individuals suffering from lack of food access, availability, and utilization.”
Additionally, another report by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) throws more light on the extent of the crisis: “in terms of the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in Ghana, 12.9 million people, or 39.4% of the total population, were affected in 2022.
It is a generally accepted scientific assertion that one of the main contributors to food insecurity is poverty. As much as it is commendable that Ghana has, over recent years, consistently recorded reduction in the rate of poverty, yet, despite the success in economic development and poverty reduction, food insecurity remains a challenge.
Ghana achieved 3.1% increase in economic growth in 2022, and made strides in poverty alleviation, with the poverty rate declining from 52.6% in 1991 to 27% in 2022… (CARE Ghana). However, poverty remains a stark reality, especially amongst the women population.
Against the foregoing background, it comes as a welcome news to know that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) made agricultural development (food production) one of their important campaign subjects.
After the unfortunate slide of the previous government, under the New Patriotic Party (NPP), from their good start with productive agricultural development programs, nothing could be more encouraging and heart warming for Ghanaians than to know that the new government of NDC has come with the promise of setting the derailed agricultural development back on track.
With the then well planned and sufficiently supported NPP’s Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) agricultural program, Ghana’s food production noticed a significant rise, albeit short lived because, at some point, the government faulted in their focus.
In addition to all the lessons learnt from the previous government’s failure to sustain the success of its performing agric programs, the successes recorded by their programs, however, showed that, being purposeful and steadfastly focused, it is possible for the government to turn around the fortunes of agriculture and successfully lift Ghana out of hunger and poverty before the 2030 target of the SDG 2.
Thus, acknowledging that Ghana’s agriculture sector “is confronted with low production, low productivity, food losses, limited markets and poor access to credit, among other problems”, as expressed in their campaign manifesto, the NDC government admits a good understanding of the challenges faced by Ghana’s agricultural sector and food production. Consequently, it is perfectly right to believe that their campaign promises to fix Ghana’s agric sector were made from a background of sound knowledge.
Further, they also know the causes of the downturn as also sufficiently expressed in their manifesto: “These have primarily been occasioned by low investment in agricultural modernization and the entire value chain, leading to food insecurity and the alarmingly high food inflation the nation is grappling with.
“The sector is also beset with climate change and environmental degradation aggravated by the increased spate of illegal mining.” Never mind that they omitted the significant contribution of rising population growth.
Against this background, the government, in the interim, has made the promise of, amongst others, implementing their own Feed Ghana Programme; and promoting what they termed ‘SMART’ agriculture “to boost local food production for consumption”.
To achieve this program, the government states that it will establish farmer service centres to support farmers with modern agricultural equipment, technologies and inputs in all districts; create Farm Banks within agriculture zones to ease land access and irrigation facilities for agricultural purposes and encourage young people to start farming.
The program will also see government implementing “a Vegetable Development Project (‘YƐREDUA’) to enhance the production of tomatoes, onions, peppers and other vegetables…” involving the development of green houses; designate ready-to-farm spaces for sustainable open field cultivation under irrigation; provide technical support for existing urban and periurban vegetable farmers; promote home, school and community gardening, which a local NGO, Agrihouse Foundation, is already spearheading.
The government’s manifesto also promises to reintroduce fertiliser subsidy programme and free fertiliser distribution; as well as the distribution of improved seedlings and agro inputs to cocoa farmers; launch a New Strategic Crops Programme to boost and process strategic commercial crops such as cashew, palm, cotton, and rubber in our agro-industrial zones; and the highly valued intention to refocus the Exim Bank “to invest in concessional support for farmers…”; as well as other brilliant ideas.
Quite an ambitious and demanding goal the government has set for itself. However, the question of their ability to keep their eyes fixed on the ball till the very end insistently nags.
Considering that the previous government started just the same way, it becomes quite difficult to stifle the dubious feeling about their ability to take these seeming great ideas to a sustainable fruitful end without dropping the baton along the line for the pursuit of politics.
It is pertinent to recall that, at the peak of agric growth in recent years, 2022, for instance, the sector contributed 20% to the GDP (Doris D. Sasu/Statista.com), obviously buoyed by the contribution of the NPP government’s growth driving initiatives.
According to the data of the Ghana Statistical Service, in Q4 of 2022, agriculture earned 11.6k GHS million and, in Q1 of 2024, this performance dropped to 10.9k GHS million. By Q3 of the same year 2024, agriculture’s earning slipped down to 9.16k GHS million.
This slip in its growth trajectory could be attributed, substantially, to the drop in the performance of the phase 2 of the PFJ. The race for political power contended with service to the State, and the sector became the victim. So, now, getting the sector back on track and redirecting its growth path for impactful economic development and a healthy society, is what this is all about.
GDP contribution of Agriculture
It is of utmost importance, therefore, that the key default causes of Ghana’s slide in poverty and hunger alleviation performance are identified and religiously tackled, with sustainability in mind, in order to avert any future relapse.
The 2023 edition of the “State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, says that “around 691 to 783 million people faced hunger in 2022. According to the report, the staggering number represents a 122 million increase compared to 2019… This projects that, “at that rate, 2030 would see over 840 million people suffering from undernourishment, and 2 billion by 2050 (Medium.com). Ghana must not be part of that statistics!
