Food security and job creation:  Feed Ghana programme takes off  …schools, prisons, households to participate – Pres

President John Dramani Mahama on Saturday launched the Feed Ghana Programme (FGP) to make the country food secure and create sustain­able jobs in the agriculture value chain.

Under the broader Agriculture for Eco­nomic Transformation Agenda, the FGP is the strategic umbrella initiative under which all agricultural projects and interventions of the government would be executed.

Anchored around nine thematic areas, the FGP targets strategies to increase food production, promote modernised farming practices, strengthen infrastructure, and cre­ate agro-industrial zones across the country.

The areas include the establishment of farmers’ service centres nationwide to provide mechanisation services, grains and legumes, vegetable, poultry, livestock, and tree crop development projects, agro-pro­duction enclave infrastructure, and innova­tive agricultural financing.

The programme is intended to prioritise commodities that are critical to food secu­rity, import substitution, industrial develop­ment, and export growth.

These priority commodities include grains and legumes like maize, rice, soybean, and sorghum, vegetables; 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 here in the Bono East Regional capital, Techiman, on Saturday, President Mahama said agricul­ture held the key to turn around Ghana’s economic fortunes if all citizens put their shoulders to the wheel.

He noted that despite many years of ef­forts to modernise the country’s agriculture sector to increase productivity, it had been unsuccessful primarily due to limited adop­tion of “improved technologies, inadequate extension services, poor market linkages, low value addition, and weak infrastructure.”

This, he said, has left citizens reeling un­der high cost of food as a result of reliance on imports which stood at US$2 billion an­nually; a situation he said was unacceptable.

“This situation calls for a bold and deliberate reset of our agricultural sector. It requires a collective, all-hands-on-deck approach. The time has come for us to treat agriculture not as a development footnote but as the engine of national economic transformation as we have always claimed,” he stated.

Ghana, President Mahama said, has what it takes to be food sustainable including richly endowed fertile land, abundant water resources, ample sunshine, a youthful pop­ulation and strong research institutions and technical expertise.

“The challenge lies in translating this potential into sustainable agricultural growth that feeds our people, supports industry, creates jobs, and boosts rural incomes,” he noted.

He estimated that with investments in hatcheries, quality feed production, veteri­nary services, and processing, support for 50 anchor farmers this year under the ‘nkoko nketsenketse’ initiative to produce four mil­lion birds, which would translate into 10,000 metric tonnes of chicken, the importation of chicken to the tune of US$300 million would be reduced drastically.

Under the grains and legumes develop­ment cluster, the President said input supply systems would be strengthened to ensure access to high-quality seeds, fertilisers, and agrochemicals while through controlled-en­vironment farming, including greenhouse technology, vegetable production would be boosted.

President Mahama noted that financ­ing remained a key barriers to agricultural investment in the country and to address this, the Exim Bank would be refocused to offer concessional loans to farmers and agri-enterprises, particularly those involved in exports and value addition.

He said apart from individual farmers across the country, institutions like schools, the Prisons Service and religious bodies, would be targeted and provided with farm inputs like fertilisers and other implements as well as households.

Already, he said the Ghana Prisons Service, the National Service Authority, the Youth Employment Agency, University of Ghana and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology signed unto the programme.

Courting the support of all stakeholders for the FGP, President Mahama acknowl­edged that “the task ahead is monumental, but with unity of purpose and collective effort, we will succeed. Let us put our shoul­ders to the wheel. We are ready to engage in frank, open dialogue with all stakeholders to chart a sustainable path for Ghana’s agricul­tural transformation that ensures food and prosperity for all Ghanaians.”

 FROM JULIUS YAO PETETSI & DAN­IEL DZIRASAH, TECHIMAN

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