2014 National Farmers Day Address by President John Mahama- Sefwi Wiawso, Western Region. December 05, 2014.
FRIDAY 5 DECEMBER 2014
Nana Chairman,
Members of the Council of State,
Honourable Ministers,
Members of Parliament,
Members of the Diplomatic Corps,
Nananom,
Our most esteemed farmers and fishers and all our award winners,
Representatives of the Food and Agriculture Organisation,
Staff of the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture;
Indeed all distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
I cannot begin my speech without expressing my regrets and apologies for the late start of this programme and for our late arrival here. It was because we had a technical problem with the plane that we were coming with and we had to disembark and wait till another plane was secured to bring us. So let me express my apologies for the late start.
But let me say that it is a great pleasure for me to be able to join you here today for what is a historic 30th anniversary celebration of our National Farmers Day. It is a great credit to the Ministry of Agriculture and all the organisers who over the years have continued to persevere and be dedicated in celebrating this day in order to bring honour to our dear farmers all over the country.
On behalf of the government and people of Ghana I today salute all farmers and fisher folk all over this country.
To all brothers and sisters as we celebrate this day in honour of farmers I wish to say ‘ayekoo’ to all of you. Through your hardwork, your sweat, Ghana’s population of about 25million people are fed daily and industries receive critical and much needed raw material for production. Through your dedicated efforts we are able to export agricultural products to generate foreign exchange for our nation. And indeed your work continues to be the backbone of the Ghanaian economy.
Ghana is very proud of you.
I am struck by the simplicity and directness of the theme for this year’s farmers’ day celebration, and it simply says ‘Eat What You Grow’. ‘Eat what you Grow’.
This theme is very appropriate especially considering the transformation that we are trying to achieve in this country.
As you are aware, when I delivered the State of the Nation Address in February, I decried the huge import bill for food that we have to bear as a result of our non-production of some agricultural products for which we have a comparative advantage to be self-sufficient.
In that State of the Nation Address, I revealed that we were spending almost US$1.5billion every year to import food products that we have a comparative advantage to even produce more than the countries that are exporting those products to us.
If we eat what we grow, it will create jobs in Ghana. If all of us make it a point to begin to eat Ghanaian products, we will create more jobs in this country and there will be no problem of youth unemployment because we can expand agriculture and make incomes better for our people all over the country.
If we eat what we grow, we will promote good health in this country because our foods are natural and fresh. Indeed in developed countries they are looking for the kinds of food that we eat here. They call them organic foods and they pay a higher price for those foods than what they grow themselves. So if we eat our fresh maize, our cassava, our plantain; if we eat our yam, our kontomire sauce, our banku and things, it is more natural and will make us healthier than if we eat imported processed foods.
It is known that processed foods are a probable cause of cancer. So it is no doubt that we are seeing increasing cancer rates in our country. Because we like Tinapa and all those things canned. When you can eat fresh tilapia off the grill, it is much more nutritious and better than eating Tinapa. So eating what you grow will promote good health.
Eating what you grow will promote economic growth. It will save Ghana US$1.5billion on importing food products and we can use that US$1.5billion that we save to do things that are more critical to advance the education and health of our young people.
Eating what you grow, like I said, will cut down our import bill and reduce our balance of payment. We currently export approximately above US$13billion and we turn around and import US$17billion worth of products. If we are able to grow some of that food that we import it will reduce the gap between our balance of payment by US$1.5billion and that will help us have a more robust economy and an economy that can stand the test of time.
Ladies and Gentlemen.
Agriculture continues to be the largest sector of our economy contributing about 21% of total gross domestic product in 2013. The agricultural sector employs over 50% of our active population and accounts for about 35% of total foreign exchange earnings of this country. That is phenomenal and that is all thanks to the Ghanaian farmers and fishers.
As a government, we recognize the fact that our economic growth led by the agricultural sector will be most effective in reducing poverty at the national level and in deprived regions because of the strong income and consumption linkages.
If we want to move our people out of poverty, then which other sector is more important to invest than in the agricultural sector, because the bulk of our people, at least 50% of our people are involved in agriculture. And we must learn to put our money where our mouths are.
But let me quickly acknowledge that the sector is still confronted with numerous challenges and these challenges include over reliance on rainfall, which in some cases becomes erratic. If we continue to rely on only rain-fed agriculture we will continue to conduct agriculture like a gambling business. In years when the rainfall is inadequate, you are bound to lose as a farmer. In years when the rainfall is abundant you will have abundant production. So we must bring more land under irrigation, which is one of the visions that government has and is actually undertaking to irrigate more land in this country.
We also have inadequate mechanized farming. Our agriculture is still characterized by hoes and cutlasses. We must increase mechanization and modernization of our agriculture.
We also have a low use of technology. Our technology uptake in agriculture is low and that is one of the factors affecting productivity. So we need to increase the uptake of technology in agriculture.
We also have limited access to financial services. The banks are not willing to lend to farmers. If a farmer and a trader go to any bank, they are very quick to approve the loan to the trader but very hesitant to approve the loan for the farmer and that again is one of the banes of our agriculture.
Let me congratulate the Agricultural Development Bank for devoting a good percentage of their portfolio to helping our farmers and I ask other banks to emulate what the Agricultural Development Bank is doing.
We also have inefficient post-harvest management. We end up losing a lot of our produce because we are not able to manage the harvest properly. If it is rice we don’t handle it properly and so our farms could get burnt or we could lose some of the rice by inefficient harvesting techniques. If it is maize we are not able to preserve the maize properly and so they become contaminated by aflactoxins or they are invaded by weevils and destroy the quality of our maize. In all other products poor handling leads to enormous post-harvest loss.
Government’s aim and vision is to increase the productivity of our farmers. We can increase this productivity using the same acreage of land the farmers have been used to using throughout. If you just improve the quality of the seed the farmer uses it can increase his production 3, 4, 5, 6 times, and I have seen examples where just by varying the seed the farmer uses he is able to triple or quadruple his income.
Seeds were brought from outside- rice seeds- and they were planted in Ghana and they produced 6.5 tonnes per hectare when the country from which those seeds were brought were producing 4.5 to 5 tonnes per hectare. So if you just improve the seeds you can improve the production of our farmers.
But if you take the traditional farmer in the rice-growing sector sometimes he is producing something like 2 tonnes per hectare. It is the same with maize.
Maize you can produce in excess of 6 tonnes per hectare and yet if we are not using improved seeds and applying fertilizers at the right time and agro-inputs you can find productivity fall as low as 2 tonnes per hectare or 3 tonnes per hectare.
So as much as possible we must increase our uptake of technology in agriculture and that is why we need our agricultural extension officers, our agricultural financing institutions to come together and create an atmosphere where our farmers are able to get improved seeds and agro-inputs at the right time so that we can increase their productivity.
Ladies and gentlemen, as I said, we need to cut down our imports of food by expanding production of agricultural products that we have a comparative advantage to produce.
We are importing rice, almost US$500million worth of rice. The last statistics was US$470million worth of rice. We are importing poultry. We are importing fish. We are importing soyabeans. We are importing vegetable cooking oil. We are importing sugar. And yet we have all the factors in our country that cannot only produce these products to make us self-sufficient but indeed make us a net-exporter of all these products that I have mentioned.
Ladies and gentlemen, we need to see agriculture as a business. Agriculture is no longer a way of life of our elderly grandfathers in the village. Agriculture is a business that has a high rate of return. Indeed in many cases the rate of return on agriculture is higher than the rate of return in trading and commerce. And yet our people have an orientation to rather prefer to trade and invest in commerce than to invest in agriculture.
If part of the capital that was invested in trading all over the country was invested in agriculture we will improve the incomes of this nation so many fold. So let’s abandon the concept that we have and the perception that we have that agriculture is a profession or a way of life for our elderly parents or grandfathers and grandmothers that we have left in the village.
Young people have taken to agriculture and have been successful and have made a lot of money from agriculture. I have seen food crop farmers and I am sure among the award winners we are awarding today are very young people who have taken to agriculture and are able to live a meaningful life and a decent and dignified life by improving their incomes.
I have seen young people in cocoa farming. There is a young cocoa farmer whose farm I am going to visit with Dr. Opuni very soon. We are going to spend the day with him. Join him on his farm and spend the whole day with him. He is a successful young man in his twenties. When Dr. Opuni was going to the World Cocoa Conference he took him along and he was showcased as the future of the cocoa industry.
Many more young people like him can go into cocoa farming and make a very good life out of the farming. So let’s see agriculture as a business and not as a way of life. The days of hoe and cutlass agriculture are past. Modern technology and mechanized farming is taking its place.
We should also increase our production of poultry and production of fish. It is heartwarming to note that Ghana is among the highest fish consuming countries in the world, I’m sure you didn’t know this, with a per capita consumption of between 23 and 25 kilograms of fish while the world average for fish consumption is 13kg.
If you take the average consumption of fish across the world it is 13 kg. In Ghana per capita we consume between 23 and 25kg of fish per annum.
In Ghana fish provides 60% of the animal protein we require and our main challenge is how to meet the demand for fish locally. The demand for fish in 2013 was estimated at over 968,000 metric tonnes but our total local production of fish amounted to only about 50% of this figure. So it means that we have had to import half of the fish that we consume in this country.
For this reason, I have asked the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture to, not only put in place but implement a 5-year aquaculture development plan. The plan, which we have begun implementing stretches from 2013 to 2018, and will seek to improve production, marketing and environmental sustainability of fish farming as a viable enterprise.
Here again fish farming can be a business. You can produce fish commercially for the market and there is a ready market for fish all over the country.
Out of this aquaculture plan the intension is to increase aquaculture production of fish from the current 27,750 metric tonnes to about 130,000 metric tonnes by 2018. This will make more fish available to Ghanaians at reasonable prices and we will be able to eat more locally produced fish. It will generate employment and revenue for our fisher folk and it is estimated that it will create 220,000 jobs.
The development plan for fisheries will see the vast untapped natural resources in the Volta lake, the Lower Volta basin and the Bui dam receiving much needed investment.
Ladies and gentlemen, as we continue to invest in agriculture and fish production we are scoring some successes. We have seen an increase of rice production. Rice production in Ghana has increased by more than 60% and it means that we are growing more local rice and you can see the attractiveness of the rice industry by the investment that has started to be made by the private sector in this industry.
Several private sector business people have set up rice milling plants in various parts of the country and are buying locally produced rice and milling it not only for our local market but also for export. It is my belief that if this trend continues Ghana should become a net-exporter of rice in the next few years.
We also have extended assistance to the poultry sector. Major poultry enterprises are being given assistance from the Export Development and Agricultural Investment Fund in order to expand their production of poultry. At the same time we are reducing and restricting the import of poultry in order that we can give a chance to local poultry producers to have a fair access to our local market. So for those who are interested in poultry it is a business you can go into and make a lot of money.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have achieved self-sufficiency in maize production and indeed last year for the first time in many years we were able to export maize through the World Food Programme. The World Food Programme bought some maize on the Ghanaian market for export to the Sahelian region where they have humanitarian programmes of food relief.
We have achieved self-sufficiency in yam production. Indeed we are over-producing yam and we are an exporter of yam to Europe and other destinations.
We have achieved self-sufficiency in cassava production and we are producing enough cassava to feed ourselves.
We have achieved self-sufficiency in plantain production and plantain is available everywhere in this country.
One area we need to increase production is in the production of vegetables. Vegetables are easy to grow and it is something that we can take up. There is no reason why we must continue to import vegetables from South Africa.
Several of our supermarkets are receiving vegetables: carrots, onions, tomatoes and other such vegetables from South Africa. We must make it our vision to produce these vegetables locally and supply to these supermarkets.
We have also invested in sugar production. As many of you are aware, just a few months ago, I cut the sod for the reconstruction of the Komenda Sugar Factory. We are going to have an out-grower system that will feed the factory with sugarcane and it is my hope that when that factory starts working it should be able to produce 50% of the sugar that we eat in this country.
Ladies and gentlemen, as I said, government’s investment in agriculture also covers the provision of agricultural mechanization equipment. So we are expecting agricultural mechanization equipment that includes tractors, trailers, planters, fertilizer distributors, and all kinds of agricultural equipment to the tune of about US$95million dollars from Brazil.
If this equipment comes we intend to set up agricultural mechanization centres so that farmers who have the desire to have tractors plough for them or plant for them or use mechanized equipment will be able to go to these mechanization centres and rent the tractors to do their work.
Cocoa production continues to increase and I want to congratulate the COCOBOD for the good work you are doing. I know in the last year distribution of fertilizers and other agro-inputs have improved and I have received a lot of messages from farmers congratulating us on the free fertilizer programme.
But again let me caution those in our society who just think about themselves and will want to divert some of these agro-inputs. I urge the COCOBOD to be very firm on them. No matter who it is, if you catch anybody diverting these inputs kindly bring him to the appropriate authorities and they will be sanctioned as they deserve.
I know that the major problem in the Western Region is the road network. During the campaign I crisscrossed this region and I visited many of the chiefs in the palaces and with any chief I visited when I entered the palace they welcome me very warmly and said “Mr. President we are very happy that you have come to our area but what is very important is the fact that you used our roads to get to this area. I hope you saw the nature of our roads?” That was the greeting everywhere I went.
So we are taking the issue of roads in the Western Region very seriously and very soon we are going to cut the sod for the launch of a massive cocoa roads programme. We are not going to look for the money. We have secured the money and this year we are starting with US$150million worth of roads and we are going to continue every year with US$150million worth of roads for five years. I wish to assure all of you that we will cover as many of the critical roads as you are concerned about.
It is my hope that by the time I come around for the 2016 campaign a lot of the roads will be under construction or nearing completion and you won’t welcome me with “have you seen the nature of the road you used to get to our area” but you would rather say “Mr. President we thank you for the work done on our roads.”
So please rest assured government is concerned about the roads and we will surely make a difference over the next two to three years. You will see a very remarkable improvement in the road network all over the country.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me take the opportunity to emphasize the theme for us to continue to eat what we grow and bring many benefits to the nation. It will definitely help us raise our per capita income and it will decrease poverty levels among our population. It will improve our health and nutrition and we will see increased incomes for our people.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot end this speech without again acknowledging our development partners for the goodwill that they continue to show for our objective of reducing poverty and attaining economic growth through accelerated agricultural production.
We are also grateful to all companies, organizations and individuals who generously supported the organization of this year’s farmers’ day celebration.
I want to thank the national, regional and district planning committees for their diligence and commitment in planning and organizing successful celebrations throughout the country.
To all those receiving prizes today I say again a big ‘ayekoo’. You have put in a brilliant effort and you deserve this national recognition even as this year’s awards are an improvement over past years we will see these as a token of the nation’s appreciation of your wonderful efforts at keeping us well fed and self-sufficient.
Ghanaian farmers and fishers we are proud of you. Indeed you are a shining example and a great source of motivation to the people in your communities, regions and the nation as a whole. On behalf of the people and government of Ghana we thank you so much.
Mr. Chairman, distinguished invited guests, ladies and gentlemen.
May I invite all Ghanaians both home and abroad to join me to wish our industrious farmers and fishers a happy farmers’ day celebration.
Happy Farmers’ Day.
May God bless you all and May God Bless Our Homeland Ghana.
Thank you.
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