Control land use by estate developers
The activities of estate developers need to be regulated to enable rural dwellers close to urban settlements to get access to farmlands so as to boost food production.
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Nowadays, vast tracts of lands, which hitherto were used for farming, are being sold for the construction of estate houses for urban dwellers, especially in the capital city, Accra.
Farmers in the Ga South and West municipal areas, for instance, who used to produce a lot of foodstuffs for sale at Kasoa Market, are now buying foodstuffs from the same market, simply because all the lands they used to farm on have now been taken over by estate developers.
In as much as accommodation should be made available for the ever-increasing population in our cities, the judicious use of available lands must also be considered, since land is a fixed asset and cannot be increased in size.
For instance, the single or one-storey estate units must give way to multi-storey types of building so as to reserve lands for other useful purposes, especially farming.
Small Asian countries such as Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and others use their lands economically and are able to produce rice in large quantities to feed other countries, including Ghana.
The mere expansion of a city does not mean development and we should not take pride in that. We are just wasting the land.
Families and our traditional rulers who are the owners and custodians of these lands must stop selling lands to estate developers at the expense of farming.
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The government must step in to regulate their activities and create an enabling environment to encourage people, especially the youth, to take to farming.
The future is bleak as far as food production in the country is concerned.