Boosting agriculture through the value chain approach: Lessons from the Mid-Western States of USA

A recent study tour I undertook to the Mid-Western States of the United States of America(USA) set me thinking about what planned, sustained and coordinated agricultural activities could do for our dear country, Ghana.

I travelled to the USA, under the auspices of the America Soybean Association’s WISHH (World Initiative for Soy in Human Health) programme to undertake a short course on Soybean value chain, production, processing and marketing.

I had assumed, prior to my trip, that this was going to be a lecture room course, steeped deep in theory and nice stories. Of course these were all part of it, but just about 10 per cent of the entire course time.

The rest of the programme was spent on farms with farmers in research institutions into Agri-related issues, industries which produce equipment for processing of farm produce and higher institutions of learning that continuously offer support to the farms.

My fascination was not so much the sizes of individual farms, but the seamless blend of farms, academia, processing facilities, equipment manufacturers and the manufacturing (food and animal feed) industry. So for days, we were on a coach, touring the beautiful farming States of North and South Dakota, and Minnesota, the bread basket of the United States of America.

The farms and farmlands are largely owned by families, same as we have in Ghana, and have been handed over from generation to generation. On one farm, we met with three generations of the family all tilling the soil and making sense out of it.

A second generation 85-year-old grandfather was still an active part of the farm, as were young guys in their late teens and early 20s and their parents, proud and ready to carry out the family heritage and tradition of farming. What struck me uniquely was that these are all university graduates who have studied various disciplines, and are applying them directly to the benefit of their farms, young male and female graduates adding value to an aged occupation and doing so happily.

Rain-fed farms

One other interesting revelation was that these farms we toured in the U.S. are largely rain-fed, just like ours. What is worse, they have a long period of snowy cold weather (winter), when nothing could be done on the farms. It, therefore, required planning and a commitment to succeed.

 I was touched and moved to tears, because I come from a family of farmers too! My great grandfather, Agya Senibuor, had large tracts of cocoa, coffee and food crop farms - all belonging to him and by extension our family.

Well, we do not have the farms now, because my grandmother, who inherited her father decided to educate her three children. They attained higher education, got employed in the cities and never turned to look at even where the farmlands were located! By the time I completed secondary school, the huge farms, the pride and heritage of our family that my great father Agya Senibuor toiled to acquire and plant, were all lost - gone for good!

As I toured the farms in North and South Dakota, visiting the beautiful farmsteads and seeing life and joy in the hearts of these rich farmers, tears welled up in my eyes. Where did we get it wrong as a country? Why do we distance ourselves from farming when we acquire higher education, even in agricultural and related sciences?  Why have we become only interested in selling, and selling foreign goods? Our streets are awashed with young people only selling, and this is a phenomenon across our cities, towns and villages.

Every city suburb or town is full of hawkers and kiosks, now christened container shops. As a visiting foreigner once observed, Accra is one big open market. Why do our young graduates clamour for jobs in banks and financial institutions irrespective of their course of study?

 Academia is so far removed from farmers and ensconced in their Ivory Towers; there is no well-established linkage between research institutions, manufacturing industries and farmers such that an integrated approach in production, processing and marketing could evolve to solve problems of seed improvement, increasing yield per acre, appropriate mechanisation, post-harvest losses etc.

I had a follow-up meeting with a food scientist from one renowned research institution in Ghana on my return. When I posed a question: “What do you do with your research findings?” the answer was “…well, you need such research publication to gain promotion, so we publish, get promoted and shelve them”. Difficult to relate, but that is the reality.

My experience in the Mid-Western States of the U.S has affirmed my belief in the call by President Akufo-Addo for a new look at our agricultural value chain, and I believe his vision of Planting for Food and Jobs and One-District, One-Factory appropriately situate within this context. If we adapt the value chain approach to farming, these laudable initiatives will be sustainable and beneficial to our economy.

The government’s plan to make agriculture the lifeline to our predicament as a nation is in the right direction, if it is well planned and positioned. I will urge the managers who have been charged to implement the President’s vision on agriculture to have a value-chain approach to planning, integrate all the relevant institutions, industry and stakeholders from the scratch and develop a blueprint based on the U.S. example. The Northern Crop Institute situated on the campus of North Dakota State University could offer a good learning experience to the managers of our new agriculture vision.

However, the will to succeed as a nation is what will ensure we make the most of the agrarian revolution our President envisions. Drawing lessons from my 85-year-old farmer friend on his farm in North Dakota, nothing could stand in our way to success if farmers, industry and academia work continuously and harmoniously to find solutions to challenges impeding farming in Ghana. We must not let this be the same failed initiatives that have bedevilled us over the years. We must let it succeed, for the sake of the coming generations.

The writer is an agribusiness marketing consultant for the WISHH programme in Ghana.