Agric Sector-Ghana - Present and successive governments have done little to bridge the wide regional disparities in Ghana's agricultural sector. Reforms embarked upon by these governments from 1970 to date have caused the gap to go wider than narrowing it, according to a report released by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) entitled "Ghana's sustained agricultural growth: Putting underused resources to work". The report added that the northern regions, comprising Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions, are clearly lagging behind, both in terms of agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction. These, the UK based institute hinted, may be difficult to overcome with deliberate policies to redistribute incomes to those unfortunate regions of the country.

Although it would be unreasonable to expect the north to be as productive as the south, opportunities in cotton and probably other crops have not been taken up (given that much of the north consists of guinea savannah, which in neighbouring countries such as northern Cote d'Ivoire, Southern Mali and South-west Burkina Faso have seen booming cotton production in the past few decades), the report observed.

The UK's leading independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issues revealed that: "although yields have improved, especially for root crops, yield growth has been disappointing".

Despite a recent rebound, the Ghanaian agricultural sector has made little use of farm inputs, reducing inputs in the 1980s and early 1990s after input subsidies were cut, with market-based mechanisms for input supply starting to become effective, only from the mid-1990s and even more so in the 2000s.

The report, which was launched by the Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture In-charge of Livestock, Dr. Tia Alfred Sugri, indicated that environmental issues are becoming more central to agricultural policy debates in Ghana.

But there is much to be done to make current farm practices more sustainable to address the environmental costs of forest clearance, loss of biodiversity and unsustainable management of soils in some areas.

The report also identified the difficulty in gaining access to agricultural credit, land tenure system and unfair international trade, as some of the major challenges threatening the survival of the sector.

Launching the report in Accra, Dr. Sugri believed that if the agricultural sector is given some support, it could transform the economy in the shortest possible time, adding "that is why the President has made the agricultural sector, alongside with industrial development the centre piece of his vision for a Better Ghana".

He disclosed that last year, Ghanaian farmers produced over 14.5 million tonnes of cassava, 5.9 million tonnes of maize, 1.4 million tonnes of coco-yams, 295,000 tonnes of rice, 350,000 tonnes of fish, among others to feed the 24 million people in the country.

This saved the country from the ravaging hunger last year. While the country's cocoa sector earned about $2billion in export in 2010, whilst non-traditional export also raked in $1.5billion to the Ghanaian economy.

Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh

Ghanaian Chronicle/28/06/2011