Gov’t secures €47m to revamp irrigation

By Kingsley Webora TANKEH

The Minister of Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku, has revealed that government secured €47million funding from the French government to construct 10 new small dams and rehabilitate 8 irrigation facilities in northern parts of the country.

The project also features installation of about 250 solar-powered boreholes across the country this year alone. According to him, this aims to revamp the country’s ailing agriculture sector, reduce reliance on heavenly showers for farming activities and promote all-year-round farming – especially in the north, which has been heavily impacted by climate change.

The minister revealed this at a stakeholder engagement organised by the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG) in partnership with the African Union and Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

Ghana’s agriculture sector has remained underfunded, struggling to meet the 10 percent threshold budget allocation to the sector.

This lack of commitment and less investment in irrigation has left most of the arable land, especially in the north, uncultivated; with only 1.7 percent of irrigable land equipped with water management systems – far below the West and Central Africa average of 13.9 percent. Only 12 percent of Ghana’s 1.9 million hectares of irrigable land is utilised, leaving immense room for growth.

Speaking at the event, the minister indicated that government’s strategy for the Feed Ghana Initiative focuses heavily on the northern regions, expressing his commitment to ensuring that the projects are completed. He revealed that Ghana has tried to access the funding previously but failed in the process. But upon assuming office, “I went to the French embassy and now it’s been restored”.

The entire amount is going into irrigation. This year we’ll be doing 250 solar-powered boreholes in addition to the dams,” he added.

The northern part of Ghana is the country’s food basket. This shows how crucial farming over there is to ensuring food security in a country that still imports common staples like rice and even palm oil. However, frequent droughts and erratic rainfall have impacted agricultural productivity in those areas – straining food supply and driving inflation. Hence government’s drive to promote climate-resilient agriculture.

However, the announcement while praised by farmers as critical was met with cautious optimism amid challenges of accessing funding and market access. The National President of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG), Wepia Addo Awal, praised government’s focus on irrigation but stressed that access to finance and the influx of cheap imported produce like rice due to cedi appreciation continue to bite smallholder farmers.

“We are not competitive,” he stated, citing crippling interest rates from commercial banks of over 35 percent and a lack of collateral among smallholders to even access the facilities.

“Even the market women that were coming to us to buy, most of them started trading in the foreign rice and leaving local rice. So, we’re struggling to find market,” he lamented.

He therefore called on government to help create a market for the produce of smallholder farmers. “We’re calling on government to make it a priority to buy directly from us for their school feeding programmes,” recalling reports of contractors importing Indian rice for state programmes while local produce rots at warehouses across the country.

While hopeful about the irrigation plans, Mr. Awal urged government ensure the project’s execution and not engage in rhetoric. “Any initiative to support irrigation in the northern parts, we are in for it. But what we want to see is real action on the ground. We don’t want it to remain rhetoric.”

He also called for the long-stalled Pwalugu Multipurpose Dam to be constructed and avert the seasonal havoc wreaked on smallholder farmers along the river by the Bagre Dam spillovers – destroying their farms instead of irrigating them.

“The water that we need for farming is rather coming to destroy the investments we are making,” he noted.

However, Mr. Awal confirmed the minister has engaged with his association on some projects but demanded more transparency to promote accountability.

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