Dr Samuel Joe Acquah, the Head of the Central Laboratory of the University of Environment and Sustainable Development (UESD) has urged the government to pick lessons from Burkina Faso and provide direct support to farmers, to boost national food production and security.
He said the nation required huge investments in farming, and until the government provided direct support to farmers, the trade would remain unattractivemaking it difficult for the nation to boost food productivity and security.
Dr Acquah gave the advice in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) saying although Ghana was touted as one of the best countries in Africa, yet the Ghanaian farmer down lacked access to the requisite support of the government.
He stated that Burkina Faso was not doing anything special than giving their farmers the massive support that Ghana had failed to recognise to invest into, he stated.
Dr Acquah said, “If the government fails to inject some financial capital to support the farmers, they cannot produce, no matter the technology, experience and skills.”
He expressed worry that major banking institutions in the country were unwilling to support farmers with funding to boost their production for importers and exporters.
Dr Acquah’s interview with the GNA was on the side-lines of a media engagement on the implementation of the “Improving Study Programs in Ghana by Introducing Green Solutions, Sustainability Modules and Digital Transformation,” (ImPreSSion) project.
The three-year project aimed at improving and updating three study programmes in three Ghanaian public universities that focused on energy, water and agriculture sectors.
The University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR), University of Ghana (UG) and the University of Environment and Sustainable Development (UESD) are implementing the project to achieve the targets of energy, water and agriculture sectors of the project respectively.
Dr Acquah explained that it was also sad that most major financial institutions would outrightly refuse providing financial support to farmers fearing the high risks involved in the trade, hence the need for the government to boldly step in, to secure the nation’s fate in terms of food security and export trade returns.
He said farmers required funds to procure modern farm inputs, tractors, agro-chemicals as well as accessing irrigation facilities, saying that the farmers would also have the energy and the strength to produce more.
He said there used to be the Pwalugu Tomato factory and that of Akomadan, where farmers produce a lot of tomatoes, but these facilities had ceased to function and without any government intervention to help refine and add value to these perishable crops, farmers could not expand their production in the ensuing seasons.
Dr Acquah called on the government to create more opportunities to make the farming sector more attractive to the teeming number of graduates that had failed to secure meaningful jobs and were currently seeking greener pastures elsewhere, because they did not see any prospect in farming.
Source: Access Agric
