Agric Minister touts AGRA as true, dependable partner

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), is the only development partner that understood and believed in the vision of the Government of Ghana’s flagship agricultural transformation programme, Planting for Food and Jobs, at the outset, and has supported it since, according to the Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie-Akoto.

Not only did AGRA understand the vision to transform Ghana’s agriculture, it practicalised its support in many ways – providing technical support, supplying critically needed capital, making available priceless expertise and helping break the programmes into practical modules to ensure a successful outlay.

Dr. Owusu Afriyie-Akoto paid the glowing tribute to the farmer-centered, African-led, and partnerships-driven institution while contributing to a webinar on AGRA’s contributions to the Agricultural Transformation Journey in Ghana.

Delivering the keynote address, the Agric Minister particularly singled out Dr. Agnes Kalibata, President of AGRA, and Mr. Forster Boateng, AGRA's West Africa Regional Head, for their immense support for the government of Ghana’s programme.

“In 2017 when I had just been appointed minister for Food and Agriculture, one of the first visitors I received was no less a figure than Dr. Agnes Kalibata. She paid a courtesy call on me and engaged me and other stakeholders to secure their buy-in into government’s vision of modernizing the agriculture sector in Ghana. We solicited for both financial and technical assistance of our development partners to rollout the government’s flagship campaign of Planting for Food and Jobs. It is sad to say, our planting for Food and Jobs campaign initially did not resonate well with most of our development partners. I dare say they were doubting Thomases… For us, AGRA was the only partner who understood our vision, what it takes and how to actualize the vision.”

The Planting for Food and Jobs, running in five strategic modules, is geared towards enhancing food security, job creation, improved incomes for farmers and the general improvement of the economy.

The five PFJ modules

• Food Security: increase productivity of small holder farmers in selected food crops and vegetables
• Planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD): focuses on expanding tree crops development
• Rearing for Food and Jobs (RFJ): enhances the livestock sector
• Greenhouse vegetable production: focuses at ensuring there is sufficient vegetables for both local and international markets
• Agricultural Mechanisation Service Centres (AMSECs): aims at mechanising small holder agriculture

AGRA Support
According to the Minister, in preparing the plan for PFJ which was during a period he described as the investment community had great doubts, AGRA came along to provide technical assistance to the ministry to develop a five-year strategic plan for PFJ, which consists of four investment packets, namely; improved seeds, application of fertilizer, extension services to small holders and markets and e-agriculture.

He said during the plan preparation process, AGRA consulted with relevant stakeholders including development partners, CSOs, private sector, “and in this respect I must mention the contribution that Mr. Forster Boateng made in this effort in trying to link us up with these stakeholders”. He said the plan was later validated by the Agriculture Sector Working Group after which partners like USAID committed to it.

“In the implementation AGRA through its country strategic plan for Ghana aligned its programmed resources to invest in seed, fertilizer and the marketplace behind PFJ,” as well as in policy and regulation formulation.

The Agric Minister said several other interventions provided by AGRA have contributed immensely to improved farm methods and yields, such as the use of certified seeds increasing from 11 per cent in 2016 to 40 per cent in 2020 among PFJ beneficiaries.

There is also increased yield per acreage in rice and maize production, from 2.8 metric tonnes per hectare in 2016 to 4 metric tonnes per hectare in 2020 for rice, and for maize, 1.8 metric tonnes per hectare in 2016 to 3.5 metric tonnes in 2020.

“We are hoping that we increase this to 5/6 metric tonnes per hectare in the next couple of years. Production volume increased from 1.9 million metric tonnes in 2017 to 4 million metric tonnes in 2020 for cereal, making Ghana now self-sufficient in maize production.”

Going forward, Dr. Owusu Afriyie-Akoto said government will continue to partner AGRA in many more critical engagements, including tree crops development (cashew, mango, shea, coconut, oil palm, rubber and coffee) with the potential to generate for Ghana foreign exchange in the region of $60 million per year from the next 7/8 years onwards.

“Madam President, thank you for releasing Mr. Forster (Boateng), the AGRA West Africa Regional Head to us to support the Tree Crop Development Authority.”

Ghana will also collaborate with AGRA on the poultry value chain, digital technology for agriculture development, and in resilience and climate change initiatives, he said.

Dr. Agnes Kalibata
The President of AGRA who also congratulated the Agric Minister for his leadership, said if there are good results in the journey so far, all it meant is that the partners are doing something right and expressed the commitment to continue to do even more. “I also want to appreciate the partners who have been working with you, and sometimes with us also in some cases. This is not a single man’s journey, this is a journey that transforms 60 per cent of the country in terms of population, it is not something anybody can do alone.”

She said AGRA’s aim, as with other development partners, is that when it moves elsewhere, the systems will keep running hence its focus on working with institutions while providing the necessary support.

She said while results from AGRA’s partnership with institutions differ from one country to another, the results in Ghana have been amazing, partly because the work AGRA is doing is connected with government’s own aspirations.

“We didn’t try to do things that are separate from what the government is doing, we’ve tried to reinforce the government’s own work”, she said, and encouraged governments to formulate policies that work to benefit the larger masses, explaining also that Ghana has been a defining factor for AGRA’s work and from which mutual counsel must come.

While Dr. Agnes Kalibata stressed the urgent need for Africa to end hunger by taking pragmatic steps, she also pointed out that many are those who have tried to undermine AGRA’s work.

“A number of things have happened since we started this journey; we now have the food systems summit that is in place that we must take advantage of; people recognize that we are behind in a number of things, on hunger, on poverty, but also climate change is an issue since we started this work, and recognizing that complexity is going to be very important to how we drive for hunger and reducing poverty and I just want to encourage you to take advantage of every opportunity the food system summit offers… A lot of people have been trying to undermine the work that we do … but I keep telling people that they are not undermining AGRA, they are undermining our partners because AGRA doesn’t implement ….hold us accountable where you see that we are not doing things right, please hold us accountable but also, let’s say no to anybody trying to define who we are…. Who we are is we are trying very hard to deliver for our people, who we are is we are doing a good job through the partnership we have with you and I just don’t think we should allow other people to define that for us.”

Mr. Forster Boateng
The AGRA West Africa Regional Head said AGRA has been in Ghana since 2007 investing close to $60 billion up to 2016, focusing on research capacity building, where it supported a number of African research and breeders to breed high yielding varieties to support farmers.

These activities, along with many others yielded great results, however, he said it was fraught with many challenges as it was piecemeal and lacked integration.

“So taking a step back we realized that we need an integrated approach in driving inclusive agricultural transformation. What actually informed us was: Most of the farmers in Ghana were smallholder farmers and their productivity was low. We also realize that they were inefficient and uncompetitive. There were a lot of challenges confronting the agricultural sector in Ghana. We saw dysfunctional production and delivery systems, we also saw climate change effects on agriculture and so we needed to revise our notes and make new investments, we saw very limited access of value chain access to finance and there were sub-optimal policies that were preventing the private sector to participate fully in the sector.”

He said it was at this critical point of re-strategizing to reinvest that the Government of Ghana came out with its vision to improve productivity of smallholder farmers, cast in the frame of Planting for Food and Jobs.

“This Planting for Food and Jobs campaign was anchored in a national agricultural investment plan and when AGRA saw that, it resonated well with us and we said we needed to align our resources to support the government”, he said.

He said the strategy was to touch 600,000 smallholder farmers directly within a period of five years and indirectly, a double of the number, and enumerated a number of successes brought about by the collaboration. He said the results are available for evaluation, and thanked all the partners.

During the webinar, a number of young farmers who are beneficiaries of AGRA's support programmes shared testimonies of the improvements that have come to their vocations.