<<Print>>

Government has cautioned the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to desist from finding faults with the agriculture sector when it is doing well. This follows accusations from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that the agric sector was in a deplorable situation and the various campaign promises by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government to revamp the sector, remained unfulfilled. Responding to the allegations, the Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Dr. Ahmed Alhassan Yakubu conceded that though the sector was facing some challenges, it was doing fairly well. �I am not denying the fact that there are challenges within the agricultural sector. There is no doubt about that but I think that if a sector is doing well to render a country food secure, it should be praised and not try hard to find fault when there is none.� He explained that the country was in a surplus when it came to production of food crops such as cassava, plantain, yam, maize �and we have produced more than what this country needs to consume in totality. Rice is the only one that we are falling short� if this is very bad agriculture, then Dr. Akoto�s definition of good agriculture must be extremely indeed.� Dr. Yakubu challenged the NPP�s Dr Afriyie Akoto to tell �Ghanaians the real picture rather than taking us down the road which is very erroneous,� since he was in the know of the developments and improvements in the agric sector. Concerning the youth in agriculture programme which the NPP indicated was absorbing huge sums of money while only party members were benefiting from it, the Deputy Minister indicated: "We don�t ask for party cards before we recruit people onto the youth in agriculture programme.�