A COUNCIL of State member, Nana Owusu Achiaw, has appealed to government to reduce the country’s food imports in order to empower Ghanaian farmers to increase the production of staple foods in the agricultural sector.
The Council of State member, who doubles as the chief of Agona-Akrofoso in the Ashanti Region, believes such action will also help in addressing the phenomenon of young people migrating from rural communities to urban areas to search for non-existing jobs.
He made the call in an interview with DAILY GUIDE on the sideline of the launching of a strategic document and rebranding of the National Farmers and Fishermen Award Winners Association, Ghana (NFFAWAG) in Kumasi.
Nana Owusu Achiaw, who is also a farmer, said much as he acknowledges the huge efforts of the current administration to emphasise farming, there is more to be done to woo many young people into farming.
According to him, farming is good business, for which reason government should support more people to engage in farming.
President of NFFAWAG, Davies Narh Korboe, said Ghana needs a positive and revolutionary attitude to make agriculture work to its fullest level in the country.
He stated that farmers in US represent only about one per cent of the country’s labour force, yet they are able to feed the nation and the international market admirably, whilst in Indonesia, farming is flourishing as a result of the attention received from government and donor partners.
Mr Korboe disclosed that the rebranded NFFAWAG was determined to promote an agenda for a paradigm shift to get more women and youth into agriculture through aggressive usage of ICT to further the progress of marketing farm produce and to link up markets.
On the issue of climate change, the NFFAWAG president said the association intended to scale up its advocacy to create awareness to its members. For him, the rebranding and launching of the strategic document would afford members of the association the needed opportunity to reposition and engage government on policies that affect the interests of farmers in the country.
The Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei-Mensah, asked Ghanaians to discard the growing perception that farming is for the poor and aged.
According to him, farming provides sustained incomes which brought a lot of wealth to the older generations who took into farming, indicating that most of the storey buildings across the city of Kumasi were put up by cocoa farmers.
The regional minister asserted that farming had contributed greatly to his life as he depended on it to finance his education from secondary to tertiary.
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