President John Dramani Mahama on Saturday launched the Feed Ghana Programme (FGP) to make the nation meals safe and create maintainready jobs within the agriculture worth chain.
Below the broader Agriculture for Economic Transformation Agenda, the FGP is the strategic umbrella initiative below which all agricultural tasks and interventions of the federal government could be executed.
Anchored round 9 thematic areas, the FGP targets methods to extend meals manufacturing, promote modernised farming practices, strengthen infrastructure, and create agro-industrial zones throughout the nation.
The areas embrace the institution of farmers’ service centres nationwide to offer mechanisation providers, grains and legumes, vegetable, poultry, livestock, and tree crop growth tasks, agro-production enclave infrastructure, and innovative agricultural financing.
The programme is meant to prioritise commodities which can be important to meals security, import substitution, industrial development, and export development.
These precedence commodities embrace grains and legumes like maize, rice, soybean, and sorghum, greens; tomato, onion, and pepper, starchy crops; cassava,
plantain and yam, industrial crops; cocoa, mango, oil palm, cotton, coconut, rubber, cashew, shea; poultry and livestocks; cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs.
Launching the programme right here within the Bono East Regional capital, Techiman, on Saturday, President Mahama stated agriculture held the important thing to show round Ghana’s financial fortunes if all residents put their shoulders to the wheel.
He famous that regardless of a few years of efforts to modernise the nation’s agriculture sector to extend productiveness, it had been unsuccessful primarily attributable to restricted adoption of “improved applied sciences, insufficient extension providers, poor market linkages, low worth addition, and weak infrastructure.”
This, he stated, has left residents reeling under excessive price of meals on account of reliance on imports which stood at US$2 billion annually; a scenario he stated was unacceptable.
“This example requires a daring and deliberate reset of our agricultural sector. It requires a collective, all-hands-on-deck strategy. The time has come for us to deal with agriculture not as a growth footnote however because the engine of nationwide financial transformation as we’ve got at all times claimed,” he said.
Ghana, President Mahama stated, has what it takes to be meals sustainable together with richly endowed fertile land, considerable water sources, ample sunshine, a youthful population and robust analysis establishments and technical experience.
“The problem lies in translating this potential into sustainable agricultural development that feeds our folks, helps trade, creates jobs, and boosts rural incomes,” he famous.
He estimated that with investments in hatcheries, high quality feed manufacturing, veterinary providers, and processing, assist for 50 anchor farmers this yr below the ‘nkoko nketsenketse’ initiative to provide 4 million birds, which might translate into 10,000 metric tonnes of rooster, the importation of rooster to the tune of US$300 million could be decreased drastically.
Below the grains and legumes development cluster, the President stated enter provide methods could be strengthened to make sure entry to high-quality seeds, fertilisers, and agrochemicals whereas by means of controlled-environment farming, together with greenhouse expertise, vegetable manufacturing could be boosted.
President Mahama famous that financing remained a key boundaries to agricultural funding within the nation and to handle this, the Exim Financial institution could be refocused to supply concessional loans to farmers and agri-enterprises, significantly these concerned in exports and worth addition.
He stated other than particular person farmers throughout the nation, establishments like colleges, the Prisons Service and non secular our bodies, could be focused and supplied with farm inputs like fertilisers and different implements in addition to households.
Already, he stated the Ghana Prisons Service, the Nationwide Service Authority, the Youth Employment Company, College of Ghana and the Kwame Nkrumah College of Science and Know-how signed unto the programme.
Courting the assist of all stakeholders for the FGP, President Mahama acknowledged that “the duty forward is monumental, however with unity of objective and collective effort, we’ll succeed. Allow us to put our shoulders to the wheel. We’re prepared to have interaction in frank, open dialogue with all stakeholders to chart a sustainable path for Ghana’s agricultural transformation that ensures meals and prosperity for all Ghanaians.”
FROM JULIUS YAO PETETSI & DANIEL DZIRASAH, TECHIMAN
