Ghana stands to gain much more from agric than oil - Dr Dapaah

Accra, March 8, GNA - Ghana's agricultural sector stands to rake in far more revenue than what is being expected from the oil sector for our development, Dr Samuel Kojo Dapaah, USAID Chief Technical Advisor to the Minister of Agriculture on Tuesday stated. "We can make more money in agriculture than oil, especially given the fact that there are shortages of food supply all over the world," he said, and explained also that the country's main challenge was to address three main issues, which are land development and preparation; good seed and fertilizer; and water and irrigation development. He, however, did not provide detail comparative analysis of the two sectors of agriculture and oil.

Dr Dapaah, who was speaking at a three stakeholder forum to make recommendations for the development of a regulatory framework for the 2010 Plant and Fertilizer Act (Act 803) implementation said, 93Ghana can compete in the world and do so effectively but that demands increase in productivity and good seed and fertilizer are necessary conditions to achieve that".

The Chief Technical Advisor said with a proper land preparation in place, effective management of quality seed and fertilizer and adequate water and irrigation facilities, Ghana could meet the target increase in productivity of six tons per hectare.

Currently in terms of crop production, productivity in Ghana stands at 1.5 tons per hectare, which Dr Dapaah indicated was far too low because the capacity to increase yields on most farms in Ghana could not be overemphasized. Explaining further, he said on the average, a local maize farmer should produce about 40,000 plants on a hectare of land, but noted that only about 15,000 plants were realized.

He said just last year alone, Ghana was able to export 10,000 metric tons of maize and indicated that we have the capacity to export about 100,000 tons of the maize with proper management skills from the farmer in addition to appropriate use of technology. The ACDI/VOCA, an international economic development organisation dedicated to improving lives and livelihoods worldwide, is organizing the stakeholder workshop in collaboration with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture under its ADVANCE programme on the Act.

ACDI/VOCA is implementing the Agricultural Development and Value Chain Enhancement (ADVANCE) project together with a consortium of local and international partners to facilitate the transformation of Ghana's agricultural sector through increased competitiveness in domestic and regional markets. ADVANCE focuses on maize, rice, soybean, mango, pineapple and citrus. Parliament of Ghana passed the Plant and Fertilizer Act in 2010 to provide among things, the regulation and monitoring of the exports, imports and commercial transaction in seeds and related matters and control and regulation of fertilizer trade. 8 March 11