A photo of large scale farming
Not only this but all previous governments over the past few decades, have been lying to farmers in Ghana.
Maybe Ghanaian politicians would feel better if I state that in other developing countries politicians are doing the same and in all developed countries politicians have also lied to their farming communities in the past.
This article is about the politics of farming and actually, this is not an agricultural development process but a political power struggle.
The reason I am writing this is because I think that: if politicians in Ghana came out with the truth about farming, Ghana could develop its agricultural potential and as a country, with much further strides than today.
I will show you that this is not just a bold remark about successive governments of Ghana but the known truth of any intelligent politician who does his home work well.
Every government, this and all pasts have promised and have supported farmers in Ghana with the largest promises to small scale farmers.
The truth is none of them did it because they love farming or farmers; the largest disappointment for me personally is that development partners have always supported Ghana and Ghanaian politicians as well on the same subject.
The truth is:
None of the developed countries in the world ever developed its agricultural potential through small scale farming.
None of the developing countries has a farming community of more than 50% of their population.
Governments support farming and small scale farming only because of political gains.
Developing countries in Africa, but in this case Ghana need to modernize farming, farming methods and move as quick as possible to large scale and professional farming.
There will always be a commercial possibility for small scale, highly specialized farming of high valued crops on small farms, but that will have nothing to do with today’s small-scale farming of staple foods like maize, cassavaand yam. I will revisit that later.
Over 100 years ago, Europe and the United States were just in the same situation that Ghana is in today: 50% or more of their populations depending on farming. The main reason was because unprofessional farming on crops with low yields allowed the average farmer feeding of just 1 or 2 families more than his own, that was farming at that time with the farming methods we than had.
In those days, most farmers where involved in, what we would call today, mixed farming practices: a few cattle, a few pigs, chicken, maize, beetroot in northern hemisphere and cassava, maize in southern hemisphere. Indeed, supplying everything we eat and some to sell to buy other things we need.
Directly after what is called the first industrial revolution,the developed world started a much lesser known agricultural evolution. Strangely enough, the industrial revolution was praised all over the world while nobody mentioned the agricultural revolution (which was watered down so much that it became an evolution).
During the transitional period of the 19ththrough the 20th century, Europe as well as the United States of America had a farming community of around 50% of their populations.
After the industrial revolution farmers in Europe and America also gained access to tractors and other mechanical assistance to make farming easier.However, the largest gains were made in agro-processing where new industrial methods increased speed of production with less staff and lower costs.
Both continents saw their farm communities decline from 50%+ in 1900 to 32% in 1930, whilst in the same period of time, the average size of farms more than doubled and outputs remained more or less the same.
Between 1930 and 1950 this trend continued but at a slightly slower rate. This resulted in only 25% of their populations being involved in farming on farms four times large than previous farms 50 years earlier. The decline in population engaged in farming started and the agricultural sector developed because of automation.
After 1950 things started to move much faster. It not only declined the farming community further to around 10% in 1975 but also less farmers were producing much more than their previous generation because of technical farm knowledge and good use of fertilizers.
Between 1975 and today, the percentages of people engaged in farming, both in the USA and EU are smaller than 2% and are producing more than ever due to improved farming methods, improved crops and seeds but also to GM crops (in the USA only, not allowed in EU).
Looking at Ghana I say THAT IS THE FUTURE FOR GHANA!
Now the only real reason why politicians support farming and especially small scale farming:
ANY PARTY THAT SUPPORTS FARMERS WINS THE ELECTION.
If a political party manages to get the support of the farming communities they will attract 50% of the votes and thus win the elections.That is the only reason why politicians support farming, and they know that.
However, it is inevitable truth that the way farming is moving is in the same direction of the USA and the EU.
Asia is further in the same process and several governments in Thailand have fallen due to support of rice farming.The same is happening in Vietnam and other developing Asian countries will have to go through the same process.
One of the advantages of getting older (not old) is that you have hindsight.
I remember that my country of birth: The Netherlands went towards the end of same process in the beginning of the 1960s. The numbers of people involved in farming dropped so much that farmers were no longer a determining factor in the election and politicians started to end “fishing” for votes of the farming community.
That resulted in one of the farmers standing up and starting his own political party: “De BoerenPartij” meaning The Farmers Party with Farmer, Boer Koekoek as its flag bearer. Boer Koekoek managed to end up with 6.4% of the votes at the first election after its start solely on a one point political agenda: “Support for Dutch farmers”.
Needles to say that when the numbers of farmers further declined the size of the party went down with it and the BoerenPartij has been forgotten by the generations after that.
Because we are discussing The Netherlands I also see some hope for small scale farmers,
The Netherlands is one of the few countries in the world flourishing with a highly specialized form of small scale farming but be careful not to mistake this for small scale farming like we have today in Ghana.
Dutch farmers have developed a way to farm on relatively small pieces of land between 3 and 10 hectares (7-22 acres) by farming expensive, year-round crops by using technology, indoor- farming and low labor-intensive crops.
Flowers, tomato’s, bell peppers and other crops are harvested 2-3 times annual through, good soil use practices, daylight control and use of other advanced technologies.
Staple food can never be farmed on small scale basis, countries like the Ukraine, Australia, Canada and the USA are farming on farms of 1,000 – 50,000 acres and larger to farm maize, grain and otherstaple food.
In Asia, where the struggle from small to large scale farming is still going on, the average rice farm size went up from 2.6 acres to 4.8 acres in 2016, large farms are currently over 30 acres in Asia, but in the USA some farmers are farming rice on 200 acres farms.
Rice export of Thailand went up from 12,000 tonnes in 1986 to 31,000 tonnes in 2016 with less than half of the number of farmers of 1986.
Politicians must realize that stating that they will help farmers for political gains only delays the process that our country will have to pass through and shift the problem to the future.
Politicians must also realize that the process of moving from small to large scale professional farming caused political problems in every country that went through the process and delays in these reforms caused extra damage to their countries.
At this moment, a former President of Thailand has appealed her 5-year jail sentence for corruption, but the start of her corruption scandal was her support for small scale farmers in Thailand (abuse of state founds to subsides rice farmers). This made her win the elections.
The United States went through farmers protest several times 1896 and 1932, 1934 and through the 1960s all the way to 1979 when tractors invaded Washington DC.
In France, Italy and the UK, farmer protests have distracted society for decades, trucks were stopped and, in some cases, goods destroyed and trucks burned.
In India, farmer protest toppled past governments, the former government and the troubles are still not over for the current government.
I hope I have established that: Farming is Politics and not only in Ghana, pardon my “headline” to get your attention.
The way to go: Please Mr. President, vice-President, Minister of Agricultures and all politicians in Ghana, start as soon as possible Ghana’s own “Agricultural Revolution”, tell farmers the truth.
Invest in Agricultural schools, train students on low, medium and high level educational studies in professional and modern farming methods. Make modern equipment available, start land reforms on behalf of modern farming (larger farms are needed). Develop agricultural zones with good roads to ports and airports for exports of our agricultural products. Stimulate efficient transport means to get our goods to the internal and external markets, because that would not only help farming but our country Ghana.
Our cocoa farming will collapse if we don’t research into mechanical harvesting because harvesting of cocoa is labor intensive and when we develop, labor costs will go up.Soon, Ghana won’t be able to compete with low labor cost countries, resulting in the collapse of our cocoa tradition and the best cocoa in the world.
My last message is to farmers: Go and get more land, study modern farming methods, high yielding expensive crops and work harder than ever, because only then will you be part of Ghana’s future 2% of farming Ghanaians.If not, you will be part of the much larger group of farmers who need to disappear.
Last but not least, developing partners: stop “helping” Ghana by supporting crops, animal roaring , fish farming projects in which Ghana doesn’t have a comparative advantage and can never be a market leader. This only creates false hope for people who deserve better.
Assist Ghana in good agricultural education, best farm practices, farm land ownership reforms and transition from small to large scale and professional farming.
Nico van Staalduinen
Articles and comments on Linkedin and other media are my personal opinions as a Ghanaian of Dutch descent and are not necessarily related to my jobs or institutions I am related to.
