Ghana’s agriculture and industrialisation

By Isabella Gyau Orhin

“Mr. Speaker, growth in the agricultural sector, the mainstay of the economy, is projected at 5.7 per cent indicating 0.9 percentage shortfall against the target of 6.6 per cent. The contributory sub-sectors to the underperformance are the Cocoa Production and Marketing; and the Forestry and logging sub-sectors.”
This confession came from the Minister of Finance, Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu when he presented the 2007 budget to Parliament recently.
According to the Minister, the attainment of the objectives of the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS II) is anchored on the Agricultural Sector showing a strong growth.
“In line with Government’s policy to create wealth and alleviate poverty, the Ministry is pursuing programmes and projects to transform the rural economy through the modernisation of agriculture,” he said.

The Minister further said the sectoral goal of the Ministry is to develop a progressive, dynamic and viable agricultural economy that will ensure food self sufficiency, food security; the production of raw materials for industry; and increased foreign exchange earnings through diversification of export crops.

Agriculture is regarded as Ghana's most important economic sector that employs about 54 percent of the countries workforce on a formal and informal basis. It also accounts for about 40 percent of GDP and 42 percent of export earnings.

Critics say although the first president Dr. Kwame Nkrumah attempted to use agricultural wealth as a springboard for the country's overall economic development and industrialisation, Ghanaian agricultural output has consistently fallen since the 1960s.
During the 1980s and the 1990s when Ghana Implemented the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) and the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) the woes of farmers were deepened with withdrawal of subsidies in the agricultural sector. Government’s support for agro-based industries was withdrawn and the industries were listed for divestiture.
In particular, industrial tree crops such as cocoa, coffee, and oil palm seedlings were singled out for assistance. Clearly, agricultural sectors that could not produce foreign exchange earnings such as rice production were assigned a lower priority under the ERP.
Since then, government through loans and grants from the World Bank has strived to improve upon agriculture as the mainstay of industrialization.
The Rome Declaration on World Food Security says poverty a major cause of food insecurity and sustainable progress in poverty eradication is critical to improve access to food.
The number of people without enough food to eat on a regular basis remains stubbornly high, at over 800 million and is not falling significantly. Over 60 percent of the world’s undernourished people live in Asia and a quarter in Africa.
The proportion of people who go hungry however is greater in Africa than in Asia.
The latest FAO report shows that there are 22 countries out of which 16 are in Africa.

To improve upon food security especially on rice production, to partly serve as the industrial base of the economy, Baah-Wiredu said the Inland Valley Rice Development Project extended credit to 905 farmers and also provided technical support in the areas of land and water management techniques in 17 project districts. It has also assisted 850 farmers with average holding of 0.4 hectares to plant 340 hectares of rice under the Nerica Rice Dissemination Project.

Again the Minister said the Irrigation Company of the Upper Region (ICOUR) facilitated the production of 200 tons of Paddy Rice seed, 1,800 tons of Rice Grains and also cropped 220 hectares of millet and 34 hectares of soyabeans at its Vea and Tono dam sites.
But not every one is convinced that things will work well for the rice sector especially.
According to the General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) Trade Liberalisation has had serious implications on Ghana’s farmers and farm employees.
“WTO farm regulations are forcing many small scale farmers out of business,” the Union said.
According to the Union, low cost imports of rice have been flooding into the Ghanaian market and whether these come from competitive rice exporters or are dumped by heavily subsidized sources such as the United States, the impact threatens to destroy the livelihoods of thousands of farming families.
It is estimated that developing nations would benefit by about four billion dollars annually if subsidies in the developed world are halved.
“The strategy of producing in pursuit of food sufficiency has been subverted by an influx of cheap imported agricultural produce are destroying local production,” GAWU said.