The Plight of the Farmer

Agriculture is one of the high risk areas of doing business where an investor fears putting his or her money . This leaves the government in partnership with financial institutions and other rich nations with the sole responsibilities of funding agricultural projects, hence making the sector under funded and its potential being underutilized.

In spite of this challenge about 60% of Ghanaians are engaged in agriculture, accounting for 42% of Ghana's GDP with cocoa as its main cash crop.

Can anyone imagine what will happen if our farmers are to embark on strike action because of poor conditions of service? This makes their profession one of the most essential in nation building; but it is sad their efforts have been always overlooked.

For instance, the average Ghanaian farmer is still using traditional methods in cultivating. This explains why the educated youth find shameful to go into farming and agro-business.

Post harvest losses are a major concern to the Ghanaian farmer, accounting for about 30 to 40% loss of farm produce. Fearing that their produce will get rotten with time, the farmers sell them at prices they can break even or in some cases lower than their incurred cost. Lack of silos also make most foodstuffs which could have been stored and used during lean seasons perish on the market.

Much attention has not been paid to solving this problem because Ghana has not experienced severe food shortage, as in Niger and other sahelian countries.

Poor transportation facilities from farms to markets make foodstuffs in bad condition when they get to the market making them lose their market value.

Farmers also do not have access to new and improved technology. This new technology can be better and new methods of planting, better seeds and seedling of higher yields, good irrigation systems and enhanced methods o of disease control.

Our research bodies and agric institutions are also under resourced. These are the ones who can come out with innovative and better methods of farming and also produce quality agric students who really understand the concept of agriculture not only theoretically but also practically.

Most farmers do not have money to purchase fertilizers, insecticides mid pesticides and good techniques of applying them. Increased crop production must somehow depend on greater crop yields not always on area extension.

One disadvantage our local farmers are facing is the unfair trade practices from these wealthy nations. These nations spend billions of dollars subsidizing agriculture in their nations. This makes their farmers sell their produce at lower prices. In our case there is no subsidy for our farmers and this makes our produce expensive compared to theirs and uncompetitive internationally. The West then exports our produce cheaply, making our farmers run at a loss.

Makers of coffee, tea and chocolate products buy our raw materials cheaply and sell in their countries at higher prices. Each cappuccino served in the U. S. coffee chains takes about 1 ounce of coffee, bringing 4.5 U.S cents to producers, while customers pay around $2. Most of the money goes to the coffee traders, grinders, and retailers in the U.S. and other rich nations to the detriment of our farmers.

It has always been argued that the best aid the wealthy nations can give us Africans is by providing a fair trade, by cutting down subsidies on agriculture to provide a plain level field for our farmers to compete with them. This has been the cry of our African farmers. Debt relief will not solve our problem. We want attractive exports that can increase our foreign exchange earnings making our economy better.

Since agriculture is the backbone of our economy the questions that need to be answered are; is the government committing enough resources to the development of agriculture and also how committed is the government in seeing to the impletion and completion of agricultural projects since most agric projects are started and never completed.What steps are being taken to expand our agro export base? Do we want to export materials forever without adding value for them to be finished products?

Link to allAfrica.com: Ghana: The Plight of the Farmer (Page 1 of 1)