President-elect, John Dramani Mahama
President of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG), Wepia Addo Awal Adugwuala, has welcomed the decision by President-elect John Dramani Mahama to rename the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to the Ministry of Food and Agribusiness.
“This is the way to go. We must begin to look at agriculture as a business and not a way of life,” Mr. Awal Adugwuala said in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Takoradi.
As part of the policies of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), President-elect Mahama has announced plans to rename the Agriculture Ministry to make agricultural practices attractive and lucrative, enticing Ghanaians, especially the youth, to venture into agribusiness.
While congratulating President-elect Mahama on his unprecedented electoral victory, Mr. Awal Adugwuala noted that “the renaming of the Agriculture Ministry will attract the needed resources for the Ministry to invest in agriculture in terms of irrigation, mechanization, storage, processing, and marketing.”
He said the biggest success of the 24-Hour Economic policy of the NDC government would be in agro-processing for value addition and the creation of jobs for the youth.
The President of the PFAG called on the government to introduce subsidies and make them readily available to farmers as a key to reducing the cost of production.
Mr. Awal Adugwuala observed that many developed countries have subsidized agriculture and asked Ghana to take the issue of subsidies seriously, particularly for smallholder farmers.
He also urged the government to ensure tax exemptions on agricultural inputs to make them affordable for farmers to grow more food to feed the nation.
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