EDITORIAL: Another Farmers' Day Celebrated, What Next?

That agriculture is the bedrock of the economy has been acknowledged by governments and our economic managers since independence. What however remains is the level of commitment to make agriculture play a dominant role in turning the economy around.

Once more, for over two decades, the National Farmers' Day was celebrated in Wa the Upper West Regional capital. The situation where the farmers' day has become a political event where politicians scramble for media attention instead of using the day for major policy implementation pronouncements and assessments for the benefit of the Ghanaian farmer is unfortunate

It is an incontrovertible fact that although some individual farmers have been able to sustain attained levels in productivity, it is not due to any deliberate government action for agriculture in general, which employs about 60 percent of the population.

Those in the food crop sector, mostly poor peasant farmers are among some vulnerable sections of society who have not seen these benefits. If we are to make headway in economic development, policy makers must accept the crucial role of public investments, especially in agriculture and infrastructure, to lay the basis for private-sector-led growth.

In a hungry and poor rural economy, as most of Ghana is today, a key starting point is to raise farm productivity. Peasant farmers need the benefits of fertilizer, irrigation, and high-yield seeds, all of which can spur economic takeoff.

Our economy is not attaining the desired levels of growth because in the early 1980s, we allowed the IMF and World Bank to impose the Structural Adjustment Programme on us. For more than two decades our governments were compelled to forget financing agriculture, leaving impoverished peasants to fend for themselves. The result has been a disaster in Ghana, as farm productivity became stagnant, reducing the economy to a net importer of rice for instance.

Government in the 2008 budget proposed to make credit available to farmers to boost productivity. This newspaper hopes the government will truly honour its side of the bargain to turn agriculture around for the benefit of our farmers and the economy.

It is a fact that most farmers depend on the level of productivity and marketing of the products and without addressing the issue of finance and market opportunities the business activity of these farmers will suffer, hence the need for improvement in the access to agricultural financing.

Government must also consider increasing funding for agricultural research for new high-yield rice varieties to improve productivity.