Agric extension policy framework under review

Very well spoken by the Director of Agric. My question is why the decentralization system of the MOFA has not been effective so far. People are afraid to take decisions because of too much power given to people in authority who also do not take the decisions. Each time someone has to take a decision they have to cross-check or you have to write a letter or proposal before you are given the green light. So many students are sitting at home who can be used to support extension work. We need to be bold as a country and solve the problems in the field not at workshops. Too much talking and very little action. What is being done should be visible and understood by all. Most of all by the farmers who are actually going about their everyday livelihoods......FARMING. They need the support not the talk. There are so many young people losing interest in farming because it is just too much work even trying to get land to start a farm. Too much work trying to get financing to start a farm.. what is all the plenty talk about. Dr. Kwame Amezah, Director, Directorate Agriculture Extension Services (DAES), has observed that considering the current decentralisation system of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA), steps must be taken and all efforts harnessed to ensure efficient coordination at all levels and ensure effectiveness and sustainability. “It is therefore believed that if local governments take responsibility for extension, as they are closest to the grassroots, farmers’ needs could be better met. This is on the basis that extension staff are localised, conversant with farmers’ needs, and will be able to facilitate extension activities more effectively.” Dr. Amezah, who read the keynote address on behalf of the Chief Director of MOFA, Mr. Joseph Boamah, at a two-day Agriculture Extension Policy Forum this week in Accra, said DAES has played significant roles through various initiatives such as Training and Visits (T&V), Participatory Technology Development and extension (PTD&E) and Farmer Field Schools among others, in empowering farmers to carry out their farming activities in a more effective, business-like and sustainable manner. He said the subsistence nature of most Ghanaian and African farming, and the cost of extension services, leads to a much stronger case for state intervention in support of food production. He stated that the need for a well-articulated and comprehensive Agricultural Extension Policy cannot be glossed over. “It is the bedrock on which the development and advancement of the agricultural extension can be well defined, approaches and functions well spelt-out; and the importance of such a policy is further buttressed by a statement made by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations’ (FAO) Consultation on Agricultural Extension (GCAE) held in Rome in December 1989, where it was recommended that all national governments should develop and periodically review their agricultural extension policy.” Amezah noted that issues such as geographical coverage, target beneficiaries, staffing, funding and sustainability will be easy to examine and address if such a framework exists. He however added that global and regional experiences suggest that extension services are demand-based and market-driven, incorporating private sector as well as government and non-governmental resources. The forum was a collaboration of MOFA, the Modernising Extension and Advisory Services (MEAS) Project and the USAID/Ghana Feed the Future Agriculture Policy Support Project (APSP), and was aimed at creating a platform for stakeholders from the public, private and civil society sectors to come together and share experiences and expertise toward making efforts at improving agricultural extension delivery in the country. MEAS is operated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the United States of America, with funding from the USAID. The MEAS project has been approved for a multi-part work-plan to work toward strengthening extension and advisory services for farmers in northern Ghana. APSP aims to increase capacity for the Government of Ghana, the private sector and civil society organisations to implement evidence-based policy formation, implementation, research and advocacy; and perform rigorous monitoring and evaluation of agricultural programmes implemented under the Medium Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan (METASIP). Dr. Paul McNamara, Director of MEAS, said before the break-up session that policy is central to extension and that MEAS has been working to strengthen agriculture extension services over the past five years in the country, and is consequently interested in the policy framework for extension services.

Govts should invest more in Agriculture

This story below is culled from the DAILY SABAH. The story intrigues me because one can liken the same situation in a lot of African countries where Govts always seem to exaggerate what is happening or specifically their achievements in the Agric sector. They do not invest much and yet expect a lot. They use all the wrong or outmoded policies yet expect it to work. Subsidies that must go out to help farmers are usually not given because donors say so and where they are, they are either provided very late or at the wrong time. I see from the statistics provided that TURKEY IS EVEN DOING MUCH BETTER THAN MOST AFRICAN COUNTRIES AND AT LEAST THEY HAVE DATA THAT IS READILY AVAILABLE. Food production really should be one of the main concerns of any Govt and leaving it to chance cannot be the way to food security. I was invited recently to a forum and the minister of Agric walked in and didn't even look at products that Ghanaians had displayed....He was rather interested in the foreign products of the other country. Agriculture should really be left for farmers, the experts, researchers etc. and not politicians Although officials have been talking about a major leap forward in agricultural production in Turkey since the ruling party first came to power, the recent plummeting of food prices indicates that the country's agriculture is besieged by many problems. Mehdi Eker, minister of food, agriculture and animal husbandry, recently boasted that Turkey ranks seventh in the world in terms of agricultural production, but the picture is not as rosy as the minister would have us believe. A recent statement by a leading representative of the agricultural sector reveals that the government must change its agricultural policy. In the statement, released at the beginning of the past week, the Chamber of Agricultural Engineers (ZMO) said: “As a result of agricultural policies that the [ruling] AK Party [Justice and Development Party] government has persistently sustained in accordance with [norms set by] global powers, our farmlands have shrunk by around 2.7 million hectares over the last 10 years. The amount of land that our farmers have given up to cultivate is about the size of the European country of Belgium.” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu boasted at a meeting of the Turkish Union of Agricultural Chambers (TZOB) last weekend that Turkey is Europe's biggest agricultural producer, with the revenue from its agricultural production last year having reached $61.3 billion. Eker pointed out, in a May 14 statement issued on the occasion of World Farmers' Day, that the government would give farmers a total of TL 10 billion ($3.8 billion) in subsidies this year. But the government has been much criticized by the opposition, which says that if the subsidies offered to farmers had been sufficient, they would not have stopped cultivating a significant portion of the country's land. The agricultural subsidies provided by the government to farmers amounts to about one-half of 1 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), but it should really be as high as 1 percent, according to a law on agriculture introduced in 2007. “The subsidies provided to agriculture in 2014 should have [actually] been TL 17 billion. You are entitled to bigger [subsidies],” Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), told farmers' representatives at last weekend's TZOB meeting. He suggested that the farmers would win their case if they were to take the issue to court, underlining that the financial aid transferred in subsidies to the sector is well below what it should be. The country's agricultural exports, valued at around $4 billion in 2002 when the ruling AK Party came to power, increased to $18 billion last year. Minister Eker also stressed in his statement that Turkey has become a net exporter of food, but the country's imports in agriculture have also skyrocketed. According to the CHP leader, who said farmers were paid TL 9 million ($3.5 billion) in subsidies in 2014, Turkey paid TL 350 billion ($135 billion) in imports in food and agricultural products. Noting that Turkey last year paid TL 44 billion ($17 billion) for imports in food and agricultural products, the CHP leader said at the meeting: “This is exactly five times higher than the subsidies [for 2014]. If Turkey had been governed intelligently, this picture would be in reverse.” “If they [the government] had paid half this amount to farmers [in subsidies], I assure you that we could have raised enough food to sustain not only Turkey but also the Middles East,” the CHP leader explained. The yearly cost of Turkey's agricultural imports has risen more than four times since the AK Party came to power in 2002, suggesting that the country's performance with regard to self-sufficiency in agricultural production is on the decline. While the amount of money Turkey paid for imported agricultural products was $1.69 billion during 2002, it totaled $8.62 billion between April 2014 and March 2015, rising by a dramatic 409 percent. Turkey's imports in food products last year reached more than $5.6 billion, Şemsi Kopuz, the president of the Federation of Food and Drink Industry Associations of Turkey (TGDF), said at a press meeting last month. According to official data, Turkey imported agricultural products from 153 countries in 2014. Bahrain, Belize, Cambodia, Djibouti, the Dominican Republic, Iceland, Jamaica, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Mali, Mauritania, Nepal, Niger, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Qatar, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Surinam, Venezuela and Zambia are among the countries which have been added as import partners of Turkey for agricultural products over the years. The sharp hike in recent months in the prices of certain food products, which is not surprising given that farmers have given up farming a sizable portion of land in the past 10 years, also indicates problems waiting to be resolved in agriculture. Unusually high potato prices -- as much as TL 5 ($1.9) a kilogram -- have made the news at various times in Turkey this year. The government pins the blame on speculators, vowing that it would fight against the stockpiling of food. Potato prices have as much as tripled since last year. Stockpiling is generally conducted by middlemen who withhold large quantities of produce, only to release it on the market when prices increase. The opposition also indicates that the share of agriculture in national product has diminished by half since the ruling party came to power.

South Africa: Fear Grips Foreigners in Johannesburg

Lord help us....is this the Africa Kwame nkrumah envisaged. Did we not use our hard earned money to support their freedom and independence so that we could unite and be one. What a shame. I hope that these South Africans doing this realize that their citizens are also foreign nationals in other countries. It is indeed a very sad moment for Africa. President Zuma yes! not all south Africans are xenophobic but this situation could have been better managed if you paid more attention to the plight of the indigenous South Africans who are doing all of this because of the hardship they are going through and think that foreigners have taken over their jobs. a lesson to all African leaders. stop stealing our money and enriching yourselves and rather raise the standard of living of the suffering masses in your countries. Story from Al Jazeera Twelve people have been arrested, with anti-foreigner attacks in South Africa spreading to parts of Johannesburg's commercial hub, according to South African police. Police fired rubber bullets into a crowd of South Africans in the city's Jeppestown area on Friday. A crowd of South Africans carrying hammers and axes gathered near the city centre, chanting "Foreigners must leave." The arrests, made overnight, came as groups of South Africans who had gathered in Jeppestown and Cleveland blocked roads with rocks and burning tyres and then ordered foreigners to leave the country, police said. Jeppestown and Cleveland are neighbourhoods adjoining the Johannesburg Central Business District (CBD). A number of shops in the CBD were reported to have been looted and vandalised, further escalating tensions between foreigners and South Africans in Johanneburg. Police said the suspects were trying to break into shops owned by foreigners. Colonel Dlamini, police spokesperson, told Al Jazeera calm had been restored, but refused to reveal whether police had received credible reports of further threats of violence against foreigners in the city. Violence targeting immigrants started earlier in April in the port city of Durban, claiming the lives of six people so far. Rumours circulating Rumours of imminent attacks on foreigners have continued to affect foreign nationals in Johannesburg. Ahmed Fifa, a 35-year-old shop owner in the Ramaphosa settlement east of Johannesburg, said foreign nationals were warned by locals to vacate the area on Thursday night. "One of the community leaders came to us and told us to move all our stuff and save our lives," he said. According to Fifa, the South Africans in Ramaphosa are divided between those who seek to protect foreigners and those intent on violently driving foreigners out. "I can't go back until the situation remains stable," Fifa said. "I have seen the pictures of what happened in Durban and I need to save my life. "The only problem we have here is the xenophobia." In Durban, where six people have been killed in the last two weeks of violence against immigrants, police spokesperson Jay Naicker a fragile calm had been maintained on Friday. "Overnight we had no reported incidents and it has been calm," Naicker said, adding that the police had not received reports of further threats against immigrants in coastal city. He said foreigners would still not be re-integrated into the affected communities. "The area is still tense and the police and security deployment will remain for a while," Naicker said. Amir Sheikh, the chairperson of the Somali Community Board based in Johannesburg said the violence in Durban has inflamed tensions between South Africans and foreigners. "Some of our members have been harassed in Johannesburg following the violence in Durban." Late on Thursday a widely disseminated text message claimed that "a train of Zulus" had departed for Johannesburg. "These men are armed and they are going to be killing any foreigner they meet tomorrow." The source of these messages remains unclear, but their proliferation has sowed panic and confusion among migrant communities. "Our members have been unable to go about their day-to-day businesses because each time they open their businesses, a new message is received saying members of a certain ethnic group are gathering to attack them," Sheikh said. While these rumours have so far, proven to be false, its effects have already been felt. Foreign owned stores around Johannesburg have been closed for at least two days already. "The unfounded rumours have caused more damage to our members than anything else," Sheikh said. On Thursday South African President Jacob Zuma and leaders of the opposition in parliament spoke out against the violence against foreign nationals. Zuma said that the majority of South Africans were not xenophobic. "We reiterate our view that South Africans are generally not xenophobic," he said. "If they were, we would not have such a high number of foreign nationals who have been successfully integrated into communities all over our country, in towns, cities and villages." This story from Al Jazeera was supplied to AllAfrica under an agreement with the African Media Agency.

Xenophobic attacks in South Africa

Disappointed about what is happening in South Africa....the xenophobic attitude and the gruesome attack and murder is just simply shocking!!!!. What is happening in Africa! have some of these countries forgotten how these same people coming from other countries came to their aid in the darkest periods? They contributed massively to their freedom and independence. I am indeed very saddened Source: Rainbow Radio 87.5fm An appeal has been made to the Government of Ghana headed by his Excellency President John Dramani Mahama to as a matter of urgency evacuate the thousands of Ghanaians domiciled in South Africa. Some members of the Ghanaian Community in that Country who expressed fear and frustration said their lives are in danger due to attacks by locals. The International media has since Monday reported of xenophobic attacks by some youth of South Africa on other African Nationals in some parts of the country. The reason for theattacks is that foriegners seeking greener pastures have taken over their jobs. Speaking to Kwame Tutu, breakfast show host of Rainbow Radio 87.5fm from Johannesburg, a number of Ghanaians who said they have gathered and locked themselves up in one house, made a passionate appeal to the government to help get them out of the country. Asked if they have tried contacting the Ghana High Commission in South Africa, the Ghanaians caught in the troubles said little is done by the Commission to support Ghanaians who find themselves in any kind of trouble. Heart wrenching photos and videos of the attacks are trending on various social media platforms.

The future of Agriculture

From the story below one cannot help but think that there is a much bigger picture than this where the future of Agriculture in our country is really at risk. Is there a future for the Next generation of innovative farmers? Yes! the reasons below might be a huge factor in the region being spoken about but on...but at the National level the youth are losing interest in farming because its nor rewarding. There is no plan to keep those young farmers who are struggling now and certainly no plan to make those in school now even keen about farming. What are the national plans? In other developed countries serious efforts are made to protect farmers, guarantee their products, there are subsidy's, there is a financial and insurance plan. Our Govt is simply too slow and doesn't seem to have any clear plan that one can follow that assures up and coming young ones that farming can guarantee your future. I pray that our leaders begin to look carefully at this aspect if we want to ensure continuity and the future of farming and food production sustainability. Miss Victoria Adongo, a Programme Coordinator of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG), on Thursday urged peasant farmers, especially young farmers in the Western Region, not to abandon their farms and fishing, for menial jobs in the oil industry. She said the region could experience food insecurity because of the rush investors were buying arable lands for estate development and fish output had decreased as a result of the oil rig. Miss Adongo made the call at a day's civil society analysis workshop on the 2015 budgetary allocation to the agricultural sector, organized by the PFAG, with support from the Open Society Initiative in West Africa (OSIWA) in Takoradi. She appealed to farmers and district departments of Agriculture, to promote small-scale Agriculture in their areas, and to ensure District Assemblies make adequate budgetary allocation for their development. In a press release signed by Mr. Charles Nyaaba, a Programme Coordinator of PFAG, the Association appeal to government to place a moratorium on the passage of the Plant Breeders’ Bill, while creating the platform for small-scale farmers and other stakeholders to address public concerns on the Bill. The Association urged government to ensure that the Bio-safety Authority is put in place, to actively monitor the activities of the National Bio-safety Committee public. “We call for direct dialogue between the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs and the PFAG to address the concerns of small scale farmers including the traditional rights to select, store and share seeds”, it said. The Association said if its plea is not heeded by Parliament, it would continue to use all legal opportunities available to make its position known to the Ghanaian citizenry. “We will have no option than to call on farmers, traditional authorities, faith-based organizations, civil society organizations and consumers in general, to draw their attention on the dangers in passing the Plant Breeders’ Bill as it stands”.

#Owuraku Asamoah – A Radio Gem In The Eastern Region

I needed to share this with you all. Over the last one year Owuraku Asamoah, has worked very hard on this STAR Ghana project and has ensured the project maintained focus and pushed everyone working with him to become successful. He has made all of us at Rite Fm very proud by ensuring that his leadership on this project has gained recognition not only for himself but the institution as a whole. Honesty, hardwork and determination are a few of his traits and it has played a key role in making him one of the outstanding presenters and managers of #Rite90.1Fm certainly paid of. We are grateful to #STAR GHana for giving us the opportunity and #SocioServe GHana our partner on the project for being our back bone

Some radio presenters outside the Greater Accra Region are doing marvelously well but have not been in the limelight. A presenter of that ilk is Owuraku Asamoah who is known in private life as Emmanuel Asamoah. Owuraku has been working with Somanya – based Rite 90.1 FM since 2004 as a talk show host with no professional journalistic background. “I grew up in Koforidua from Christ Preparatory to Church of Christ Mission to Saint Peter's Anglican to Koforidua Secondary Technical School then to Kumasi Polytechnic to do Civil Engineering but spent the first nine years of my life in Asesewa, the capital of Upper Manya. In short, I am a Civil Engineer doing radio and I have no regrets,” he told Flex newspaper. Owuraku added that he feels 'paid' and fulfilled when he is able to impact what he has onto others and to bring relief and development to lives in the rural setting. In August 2012, The George Atkins Communications awarded him in recognition of his outstanding contribution to Farm Radio International which took him to Arusha, Tanzania through Kenya and at the same time attended an AGRA conference with Kofi Annan. “Twice, I have been in Berlin to cover the Fruit Logistica and a documentary I did for the trip when I met Ghana's Ambassador to Germany won my station an award for promoting rural enterprise this year,” Owuraku added. He has also managed Rite FM which according to him is the best Radio Station in the Eastern region for more than three years and won several awards in their focus. Aside all these feats, Owuraku Asamoah has done developmental journalism where with support from STAR Ghana, hosted a political debate for about four constituencies in the 2012 general elections, has done work on maternal health and just finished with another on education and has been able to push ten basic schools in Yilo Krobo to move from zero percent zone in their current BECE. On the Morning Ride, which he hosts, they have pushed for roads to be constructed, water sent to those without water, people who hitherto did not have electricity now have it and markets have been constructed for certain communities in the region. “We have prodded the police to get criminals arrested to make the place safe for all,” he noted. “I am happy when people call to tell me there's a problem somewhere and they want me to address it. Well, I now have a new job with Rite FM as a Programs Director which I am trying to get used to with the passage of time. I have gotten to where I am in life because of God and my family and some great friends and I am ever grateful to anyone who has been a part of my success story,” he concluded. Owuraku is undoubtedly one of the best morning show presenters in the Eastern Region and his contributions to the communities he serves tell it all. Tune in to the Morning Ride every weekday from 7am to 10am and get into the world of Owuraku Asamoah. His name is Asamoah – Owuraku Asamoah!!! FLEX NEWSPAPER

This is such an interesting Piece I needed to share it with you all. By Kwesi Atta Sakyi With the spotlight now on the critical issue of climate change due to global warming, it has become highly imperative to critically examine the issues of food security, and evaluate our agricultural practices in Ghana. There is the controversial issue of the Plant Breeders’ Bill relating to accepting Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) or scientifically engineered seeds in Ghana. The bill seems to have been laid to rest after much media kerfuffle. What is essential is to consider the bio-ethics and the sustainability of such ‘cloned’ seeds. Many eye-brows have been raised against the impropriety of such underhand methods of the foreign proponents of GMOs, because they seek to create a dependency syndrome with high economic and financial implications so that we have no capacity to have ownership of our own indigenous seeds, as we will willy-nilly perpetually have to import all seeds from abroad. Is that another form of neocolonialism or economic imperialism? Our Ghanaian economy has long been characterized by heavy import-orientation, and an equal outward-orientation strategy of exporting unprocessed commodities, among others. This has robbed us of much needed extra foreign exchange, because of little value-addition to our exports. We export raw coffee and cocoa beans, cashew nuts, kola nuts, pineapples, and bananas. We also export unprocessed timber, bauxite, gold, diamonds, manganese, and lately, crude oil and gas. The annual food import bill is colossal indeed in Ghana. It is all our fault of acquiring insatiable desire for foreign foods such as turkey tails, apples, grapes, cheese, ham, sausages, cornflakes, canned foods, among others. Yet in Ghana, we have our own vintage delicacies such as apapransa, kose, esaato, boodooo or abolo, epitsi, kaakro, tatale, koobi, you name it. The Indians, Chinese, and Japanese are all self-sufficient in their domestic food needs, and they eat what they grow themselves as they are highly insular and patriotic. Our President, His Excellency, John Dramani Mahama, has called on Ghanaians to patronize made in Ghana goods. This is a clarion call to us all to go back to basics. Dr Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General, has been very vociferous in campaigning hard to bring the issue of food security to the agenda and policy arena of African governments at the least opportunity. IFAD, an agency of the UN and World Bank, based in Rome, is equally helping small scale farmers in Africa with loans and other farm inputs. We in Ghana should realize that reliance on mining will not take us far because minerals are diminishing assets, and are also called robber economy. Gold, diamonds, bauxite, and manganese have been mined for more than a century in Ghana yet we still see no benefits to the local communities where these minerals are extracted. Ghana as a whole has not benefitted as much as those in say South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia, who have benefitted from their natural endowments. Why? Is it because our leaders negotiated poorly at the outset, or because we lack discipline in the use of the mineral royalties and proceeds? Is there a cartel among us who receive the proceeds into their foreign accounts? However, agriculture is the oldest profession, and it will continue to be the bedrock and mainstay of our economy, because we depend on it for our livelihood. It becomes imperative for us therefore to pay particular attention to agriculture in Ghana, as our population is growing at 2.4% per annum. The Malthusian spectre of Doomsday stares us starkly in the face. We will need also to overcome natural calamities in agriculture such as floods, droughts, bush fires, locusts, army worms, crop diseases such as black boll weevil, capsid bug, iron-rust, among others. It is estimated in some quarters that the annual cost of importing rice in Ghana is about 500 million dollars; such a stupendous sum, and needless frittering away of our scarce foreign exchange. This excludes incalculable foreign exchange expended on importing other food items such as sugar, flour, frozen meats and fish, dairy items, fruits, among others. Have we become dumping grounds for cheap and highly-subsidised agricultural outputs from other climes and countries? What is the use of a nation which cannot feed itself? It is cardinal that we pay particular attention to livestock production in Ghana as we have a huge protein deficit in that area. We also need to beef up arable farming, fish farming, hydroponics, aquaculture, and drip-irrigation. We learn on authority that our fish stocks in the Atlantic Ocean are fast depleting due to uncontrolled plastic pollution, discharge of toxic industrial and domestic effluents into the sea, mass rape of the sea resources by huge foreign trawlers which prowl our seas at random and with abandon, among other causes. Ghana is fortunately located near the Equator, with two rainfall regimes in a year caused by convectional currents, orographic or relief rainfall, and seasonal monsoon rains. Cyclonic rain is rare in the tropics because they are restricted to the temperate regions where we have occluded fronts and a lot of atmospheric instability. Our agriculture is based on rain-fed agriculture, which makes it risky and dicey because of extreme changes in weather patterns. The Ghana government, over the years, has improved the lot of farmers by increasing producer prices of cocoa and other cash crops. It has also assisted cash crop farmers to cheaply access farm inputs such as spraying equipment, chemicals, hybrid seeds accessed from the Ghana Seed Company, farm extension services, and marketing outfits such as the produce buying agencies, and scholarship schemes for farmers’ children through COCOBOD. It has also funded research in agriculture in places such as the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) at Akyem Tafo, Bunso, Kwadaso, Mpraeso, Nalerigu, among others Farmers have also been incentivized by organizing farm shows to showcase our farm products, and to afford opportunity to award best farmers. Our farmers have received subsidized farm inputs such as weedicides, fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, farm machinery, among others from the government. However, the biggest hurdle for our farmers is at the tail-end or downstream part in the supply chain, in the form of well-structured marketing of farm produce. Many a time, food surplus areas face glut or surfeit of output, with no immediate connection to the food deficit areas, due to poor rural roads, poor storage and preservation facilities, high cost of transportation, lack of information, low market capacity, among other obstacles. This is why our subsistence farmers need to form critical mass cooperatives in order to ease access to the market, and to reduce marketing and transactions costs. We need structured markets for our farmers so that they can derive optimum revenue for their sweat. The high fluctuations in the business of agriculture has led to some theories being put forward such as the hog cycle, or the explosive and convergent cobweb cycles. To even out such uncertainties and supply-side shocks, interventions are recommended such as having a buffer stock system, and using price targets or minimum price interventions, which are set within a band, around the equilibrium market price, with price ceilings and price-floors. Our farmers should be spared the spectre of seeing their crops rotting or being bought at give-away prices. Our peasant farmers who engage in subsistence farming should be assisted by the use of IT/IS to have easy connectivity with the markets for easy sale of their produce, especially to those in the urban areas. Rather than empowering our farmers, we find intermediaries in the supply chain who become better off at the expense of farmers. The escalation of food prices in urban areas is caused by the poor distribution networks, and the weakness in the agricultural supply chain. Labour is scarce these days on the farms because many young graduates do not stay back in the villages to tend their parents’ farms. This is where we are likely to face unsustainability of subsistence farming in Ghana, after the passing away of the older generation. It was funny the other day to read a suggestion on the internet that the Ghanaian government should allow an influx of cheap labour from neighbouring countries to supply cheap labour on our farm estates. This is where we need to think ahead by establishing commercial farms and plantations, commercial fish farms, and truck and market gardening in the peri-urban areas to sustain agriculture in the long-run. We need to create synergies and tight integration in the agricultural supply chain by linking animal feed makers to the poultry, piggery and other livestock farmers. We need to link the supermarket chains, stores and retailers at the downstream part of the chain to the farmers. Many young people nowadays think farming is a dirty and menial job, yet many millionaires in the USA are farmers. There is gold in the soil. Our poultry industry in Ghana is dying a slow and natural death because of high cost of input and neglect by the government. Besides, their market is killed by high imports of tasteless frozen meats. The Ghana government should with immediate effect ban meat and chicken imports to make us sustainable in livestock production. My elder brother who is 87 years, and a retired mason or bricklayer, used to work for the disbanded Animal Husbandry Department under the Ministry of Agriculture. He was once stationed at Amasaman and Pokuase near Nsawam. He later transferred to the derelict and defunct Pomadze Poultry Farm near our hometown, Winneba. Those were the 60s and 70s when state-run enterprises supplemented the efforts of subsistence farmers, and they served as yardsticks or benchmarks of good practice. We had quality feed produced for sale to livestock farmers, and quality calves, chickens, and piglets for those who wanted to embark on livestock farming. Pomadze Poultry was an excellent enterprise which was killed at a time it was blossoming and serving as a source of quality protein supply in Ghana. Most of those large-scale commercial farms were funded by government, as models of excellence, under the Kwame Nkrumah regime. It is very sad indeed to reflect now that those farms offered lots of employment opportunities, and they ensured food security. Most of our agricultural experts then were trained in Israel and they were innovative. After the 1966 coup, those viable state-run commercial farms were sold for a song to some underserving local businessmen who ran them down, hence the food deficit in protein sources that we are currently facing in the country. Ghana now imports lots of tasteless frozen meat products into the country from abroad, thereby indirectly patronizing foreign farmers and emasculating our indigenous producers. This is part of mercantilist beggar-my-neighbour economics reminiscent of the 18th and 19th centuries. I do not know which World Trade Organisation Protocols that we have signed to expose our farmers to so much risk from foreign competitors who supply us sub-standard meats. This sad state of affairs is tantamount to dependency syndrome and neo-colonialism, whereby we still do not have economic freedom. Nkrumah warned us about such developments in his many writings on the last stage of imperialism and neo-colonialism. We are our own vehicles and instruments for economic and cultural enslavement and incarceration. What compares with our own home-grown chickens, goats, guinea fowls and sheep? Not those insipid and nutritionless frozen meats imported into our country! In conclusion, I call upon us as Ghanaians, to go back to our roots and develop backyard farming. Those who have the wherewithal should invest heavily in agriculture because it is the backbone of our economy, and it holds the key to the survival of our nation. We need to intensify organic farming in Ghana. Let us come up with innovative ideas in farming, to increase yield, but not compromising on accepting GMOs lock, stock, and barrel, hook, line, and sinker.