USAID invests US$85m in agriculture
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has invested about US$85 million into the agricultural transformation in the country for the past two and a half years.
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The investment was directed in key crop production such as rice, maize and soy value chains with majority of the funds directed to agro input dealers, processors and farmers under the USAID Financing Ghanaian Agriculture Project (USAID-FinGAP).
The acting Chief of Party of the USAID-FinGAP, Dr Victor Antwi, who revealed this at the third Annual Ghana Agribusiness Investment Summit 2016 in Accra, said the project had been able to achieve its target ahead of scheduled date.
“We have passed our target of US$75 million which was supposed to be by the end of July 2018,” he said.
According to him, the USAID-FinGAP was part of the Feed the Future the USAID-Implementing Partners network and it was set up to facilitate financing into the maize, rice and soy value chains.
The project supports USAID Ghana’s Feed the Future (FtF) strategy by establishing commercially driven agricultural development services.
“We work with wide spectrum of stakeholders to address the key constraint of lack of access to finance to the agribusinesses ready for financing, linking these businesses with our preferred network of financial institutions and working with business Advisory Service Providers to continuously identify and make agribusinesses investment ready,” he said.
“Consequently, the project has facilitated over US$85 million during the last two and half years in the maize, rice, and soy value chains with majority of funds going to agro input dealers, processors and farmers,” he said.
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Dr Antwi commended all stakeholders that had supported the programme since its inception in July 2013, and reiterated USAID’s commitment to support the agriculture sector in the country.
Agriculture is the backbone of the economy
The Finance Minister, Mr Seth Terkper, in a speech delivered on his behalf by Madam Magdalene Apenteng, reiterated the significance of the agricultural sector to the economy.
“Agriculture is the backbone of Ghana’s economy and our economic growth and structural transformation can surely be propelled by a thriving agricultural sector. An efficient and productive agricultural sector will undeniably enhance Ghana’s prospect for an accelerated growth,” he said.
Employing innovation
The finance minister said the government intended to place greater emphasis on mechanised and commercial agriculture as well as agribusiness and value addition as means to grow the economy and create employment.
He noted that some of the critical elements required for achieving greater success in the sector included the availability of affordable agricultural machinery and other inputs, access to competitive credit lines and proper extension services.
Agric fortunes shaky
In spite of its continued importance, the agricultural sector has fallen from its place as the leading contributor to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to third place.
The sector, which contributed more than half of the country’s productivity since the 1980s, gradually reduced to 19 per cent of GDP last year, with the services sector leading the pack with 54.1 per cent, followed by industry with 26.9 per cent.
The agric sector grew by a provisional 0.04 per cent in 2015, according to the 2016 budget statement.
The population involved in agriculture in 2010 was 13,366,340 and accounted for 54.2 per cent of the total population, according to the 2010 Population and Housing Census. The report indicated that out of a total of 5,467,136 households in the country, 2,503,006 households were found to have individuals involved in agriculture, translating to 45.8 per cent of the total households in the country.
Rural areas accounted for 73.5 per cent of the agricultural households, demonstrating that agriculture was a concentrated sector. Since poverty is endemic in rural areas, the focus on commercially viable agriculture is a promising way to eradicate poverty.
Turnaround
Mr Terkper said the economy could not make overall progress unless the masses in the small-scale food producers achieved significant improvement in their productivity through increased investment and changes in technology.
“A number of the poor people in the country, especially women, are engaged in agriculture production of food crops, rearing of livestock and fisheries. Therefore, accelerated development in agriculture will directly benefit the poor and help to slow down the rural-urban drift,” he noted.
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Another factor was the need to increase productivity in agriculture to ensure food security and contribute immensely to health and well-being of the population, the finance minister noted.