Increase investment in smallholder farmers - Dr Afriyie Akoto tells govt
A former Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has called on the government and its development partners to increase investment in smallholder farmers.
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Making a case for smallholder farmers, he said they were the driving force behind the sustainability of the country’s food security and nutrition.
He added that increased investment in smallholder farmers would further boost food production to ensure that there was sufficient food to feed families across the country and the surplus exported to earn foreign exchange.
In the view of the Cambridge University scholar, the rising population of the African youth should serve as a wake-up call to successive governments on the continent, especially Ghana, to prioritise increased investments in smallholder farmers that accounted for 90 per cent of the country’s agricultural output.
Addressing journalists on the sidelines of the launch of the 70th anniversary celebration of the Faculty of Agriculture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Dr Akoto said the rising global tensions over the Russia-Ukraine war and the recent Israeli-Gaza conflict threatened Ghana and the continent’s food security outlook.
“We can only look within for food sufficiency in the medium to long term,” he said.
Context
On June 28, 2023, the World Economic Forum reported that in regions of the world with a young population and a high number of commodity-dependent countries such as Africa, investment in small and medium-sized agribusinesses (agri-SMEs) with processing capacity created the much-needed economic opportunity, reducing migration and building prosperity for future generations.
In Africa alone, SMEs provide an estimated 80 per cent of jobs across the continent, thereby powering growth.
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Smallholder farmers make up an incredibly important piece of the global food system — the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that around 35 per cent of the world’s food comes from farms with less than five hectares in size.
However, these farmers receive only 0.3 per cent of global climate funding, and they’re consistently the ones hit hardest by climate shocks such as floods and droughts.
The FAO estimates that “increasing investment in smallholder farmers is essential to realising the future we want”.
Solution
The solution to this seeming threat, he said, was to look within for food sufficiency in the medium to long term, emphasising the opportunities smallholder farmers would bring to the country with increased investments in them.
“The more the threats of the looming global crises unfold, it becomes increasingly clear that Ghana’s political independence, economic transformation and the survival of its youthful population would depend on a robust economy that has agriculture as an unconditional priority.
“It is encouraging to note that an increasingly youthful population yields higher levels of consumption which must directly convert to advantages that boost local food production and Ghana’s economy as a whole.
To this end, it is imperative to support smallholder farmers who continue to produce some 90 per cent of our national food requirements,” he stated.