On this year’s Farmers Day, as durbars conclude and awardees take their well-deserved bows, it is the quiet, uncelebrated figures like Opanin Yaw, who remind us of what the day is truly about.
His face reflects resilience — lean, strong, and shaped by years of unrelenting labour.
He stands at a cocoa-drying shed at Akim Hemang, a small farming community in the Eastern Region, but in truth, he stands for thousands.
He represents the farmer who wakes before dawn not for applause, but because the land waits for no man.
He represents the men and women whose sweat feed the nation, power agro-industries, earn the foreign exchange that sustains the economy, and keeps Ghana’s food chain from wobbling.
When he bends over cocoa beans, or when others like him tend to rice fields, cassava ridges, plantain groves, inland fisheries, or vegetable gardens, they are performing an act of national service — every single day.
This year’s Farmers Day theme, with its call to secure the country’s food future, hits home precisely because of people like him.
It highlights a truth we often ignore: the nation’s stability rests on the backs of farmers who rarely feature in national headlines, yet anchor the country’s prosperity.
Behind Ghana’s global cocoa reputation, behind every export statistic and every “Made-in-Ghana” food campaign, there is an Opanin Yaw — sun-beaten, uncomplaining and unwavering in commitment.
We celebrate farmers once a year, but depend on them all year.
Opanin Yaw’s story forces us to rethink that imbalance.
His work, like that of countless others, is done without tractors, without guaranteed markets and often without the support systems many modern economies take for granted.
Yet he continues, driven not by reward but by responsibility to family, community and country.
Opanin Yaw stands there smiling, not because the work is easy, but because dignity is found in purpose.
As we mark this Farmers' Day, let us salute him and the many farmers he represents.
Their toil feeds us, their sacrifices strengthen us, and their resilience gives Ghana its backbone.
Here’s to Opanin Yaw and to every farmer whose story remains unheard, but whose labour sustains a nation.
