Planting for Food & Jobs: Government to make GHC30bn

The Government of President Akufo-Addo will be generating an amount of GHC3 billion in profit in the Planting for Food and Jobs programme, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Minister of Food and Agriculture, has said.

His comment follows the revelation by President Akufo-Addo while delivering his maiden State of the Nation address to parliament on Tuesday February 21 that an amount of 125 million Canadian dollars, had been secured for the programme.

Mr Akufo-Addo, while delivering the address, said: “A national campaign, Planting for Food [and Jobs] will be launched to stimulate this activity. An amount of 125 million Canadian dollars has been secured from Canada to support the initiative. This campaign will be anchored on the pillars that will transform agriculture - the provision of improved seeds, the supply of fertilisers, the provision of dedicated extension services and marketing strategy, and the use of e-agriculture.

“To initiate the campaign, the district assemblies will be tasked to identify and register progressive farmers in each of the 216 districts. For too long our farmers have been left to cope by themselves without the necessary support from government. For too long our farmers have been left to the mercy of the weather. We have decided to embark on a programme to provide water to enable all-year farming – we are calling it One-Village-One-Dam policy.”

Speaking to the media after the president’s address, Dr Akoto said: “He is starting with what we call the spearhead campaign, Planting for Food and Jobs, which targets 200,000 farmers in all the 216 districts and secondly, we will go on to plant these five crops which are rice, maize, sorghum, and vegetables. And that is going to cost GHS516 million and we will generate GHS 1.3 billion from it and in the process create 720,000 jobs, which is quite substantial in the first year.

“Don’t forget we have five million farmers and fishermen in this country, so in 2018, 2019, 2020, we will just keep on expanding to include more farmers and create more wealth, and more jobs so the job creation is in agriculture.”