The government is expected to produce GH¢1.3billion worth of food which is equivalent to 3.8million metric tonnes at the end of the 2017 planting season through its flagship project, ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’.
Expected to increase food security, the initiative is also looking to create about 750,000 jobs, direct and indirect, for the youth by the end of 2017 and increase production levels from 2.8million metric tonnes at a value of GH¢700million created in 2016.
Speaking at the inauguration of the Northern Regional Technical Committee for the project, the Northern Regional Minister Alhaji Saeed Salifu, who chairs the committee, noted that the project is also targeting a minimum of 21,600 proven farmers across the 216 administrative districts of the country with support to demonstrate the collective impact of the package to encourage adoption by the smallholder farmers.
The committee has been set up to ensure the achievement and the sustainability of the programme, increase food security and reduction in unemployment rate in the Northern Region, especially.
The committee is also expected to provide policy as well technical direction to the implementation of the programme at the regional level to ensure the revamping food and agriculture sector of Ghana to provide the much needed food and employment to the nation.
The members included the Northern Regional Director of Agriculture, Willaim Boakye-Akyeampong; Regional Coordinating Director, Alhaji Alhassan Issahaku; and Abdul Kareem Adam, Regional Development Planning officer, RCC.
Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto in a speech read on his behalf, noted that government for the past years has to spend huge sums of money to import foods to feed the nation while the country has the potential to grow its food to feed the nation.
According to him, the initiative by government is to help create more jobs for the unemployed youths especially when much attention is directed towards the sector.
He reiterated that government is committed towards modernizing agriculture, improving food production efficiency, increase food security as well helping to increase the income of farmers to encourage more youths to venture the sector as a full time activity.
“The committee will use the office to help create awareness on the need for people to have farms or establish backyard gardens to avert economic crisis,” he said.
He stressed that both private and public institutions will be encouraged and supported to set up their farms to fed their staff and also sell the rest to generate some income.
To enhance the success of the programme, the Minister said the farmers will be supplied with fertilizers, dedicated extension services, improved seeds, and marketing strategy to undertake their activities.
“Recognizing that lack of credit could pose as a serious challenge to the programme, all inputs that are required under the programme would be subsidized with the farmers paying 50percent of the cost of subsidized inputs at the initial stage,” he explained.
He added that identified commercial off takers and aggregators would be assigned ideally to their areas of operations to facilitate their credit arrangement.
William Boakye-Akyeampong, the Regional Director, said the programme will help improve on the existing Ministry of Agriculture’s electronic agriculture platform for providing information and extension services to make communication more robust, effective and efficient.
The platform would leverage on other software applications created by individual to ensure effective implementation of the seed and fertilizer distribution programme, use of radio-frequency identification to monitor distribution as well as track and monitor purchase and sale of farm produce,” he added.
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