It is an axiom in the profession I chose and have practised throughout my adult life that ‘Good News Is No News’. The reason behind this is that a man should not be seen going round the community shouting on top of his voice telling everyone how he takes good care of his family – that he has put his children in school, the wife is very comfortable and there is no hunger in the home. Why should society be interested in that when it is the responsibility of a man, working hand in hand with the wife, to make life comfortable for his family.
It is only when the children are out of school, dirty and hungry, unkempt and sickly that society wonders why a man who is well-to-do can so abandon his children to fate. That is where the news develops. Society would want to know why the man has abandoned his family; what he spends his resources on and so forth and so on.
In the broader political arena in which we operate as a nation, at least since the 4th Republican Constitutional dispensation and a greater part of its life, good news to the populace has become a very rare commodity. It has been woes and lamentations over one condition or the other.
For me, the news last week that Ghana is exporting plantains to some of our neighbouring countries is the most refreshing news in the agricultural sector since the last 35 years. When your ministry and its agencies, led by President Akufo-Addo, launched the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ at Goaso in the Brong-Ahafo Region last year, I am very sure many were the skeptics who believed that it was the usual political gimmicks and that nothing worthwhile was going to come out of it.
Long before the official announcement to the effect that Ghana, through your efforts, is exporting plantain to some neighbouring countries, it was very obvious to the impartial observer that this year has recorded major improvements in food production. The major road I use regularly is the Takoradi-Accra Highway. There is no village on that stretch that one would not see plantains and other food items parading and beckoning travellers to buy.
It is also a fact that under the NDC 1 & 2 administrations, we had three substantive ministers for food and agriculture which included Mr. Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the now General-Secretary of the opposition NDC, and in addition, deputy ministers in charge of food and agriculture in all the 10 regions of the country, adding up to 13 ministers of agriculture, yet we imported food from neighbouring countries, especially plantains and tomatoes.
A few weeks back, I heard some women from the Volta Region complaining bitterly that the prices of their gari had dropped compared to what they used to have under the previous administration. While the women who process cassava into gari were complaining about loss of incomes, what they failed to add was the fact that prices of cassava, the main raw material for gari processing, had gone down drastically because of the abundance of that crop on the market.
The availability of food in this country is also going to improve the diet of our children enjoying the Free SHS programme. The schools will have no reason to inadequately feed our children. With abundant plantains, ‘red red and beans’ one of the favourite meals in schools in our time will be available to our children at relatively cheaper costs. They will be fed properly at less cost, and the pressure on school administrators will go down as well.
Mr. Minister, as we pat you and your team on the back and applaud your efforts at flooding the markets with adequate food, it is also important to look at the storage and preservation components of food production going forward. I am very happy we are exporting food to our neighbouring countries. This will reduce wastage and the phenomenon of food produced going bad when our farmers had worked hard to give us so much food. To be able to have reasonably priced foodstuffs all year round requires proper storage, processing and preservation.
Mr. Minister, the other sector we need to critically look at as a nation is the poultry sector of the economy. It is a matter of fact that we have depleted our sea of its fishes. As a man from the coast, I know that our fish stock has gone down as a result of which our fisher folks record very poor harvest. You know and everybody knows that our meals as Ghanaians are not complete without good protein components.
Over the years, poultry products have come to substitute the dwindling fish stock in our seas. Our attempts to fill the gap through tilapia are also facing some challenges since recent reports indicated that hundreds of tons of tilapia died and had to be disposed of. I have no figures to support my case, but it is an undisputed fact that our national expenditure on poultry imports annually could be far higher than a very critical sector ministry, maybe your own ministry.
My visit to the Brong Ahafo Region last year on an official assignment gave me the impression from interactions I had with public officials in the region that the region alone can provide all our poultry needs if we should pay a little more attention to that sector.
Mr. Minister, is it difficult to facilitate the establishment of one poultry farm in the likes of what Messrs Kwabena Darko and Afariwa Farms did to help that industry in each of the regions of the country? I know you know better than I do that a sizeable quantity of poultry imported into this country is unwholesome perhaps because of the number of years those poultry products have been preserved.
I remember Hon. Osafo Marfo as Finance Minister at a point in time imposed some taxes on poultry products imported into the country. And as usual, the powerful nations who are the main beneficiaries of our unbridled importation of their expired products blackmailed us into reversing the policy. We may not be able to improve the fish stock in our seas in the short to the medium terms, but we can certainly improve the local production of poultry products as well as other animal husbandry to support our food production to improve our diets.
The establishment of one major poultry farm in each region will provide the nation enough protein needs to complement the abundant food your ministry has successfully mobilized our farmers to produce. The poultry farmers, on that large scale, will also produce more than enough eggs for our needs. I would not be surprised that should we put the same seriousness and support for our poultry farmers, this country can export poultry products also to our neighbouring countries.
A serious poultry industry will in its wake engender the production of maize also on a large scale to further enhance the planting for food and jobs agenda. The poultry industry itself will employ a lot of people throughout the country. The backward and forward linkages of this sector is very huge and will also save this country a lot of foreign exchange spent annually in importing poultry products some of which have been preserved for so many years before consumption.
We also need to get our people to appreciate what we produce in Ghana and reduce their tastes for foreign foods and consumables. Congratulations! But we can do more.
Yours sincerely,
By Kwesi Biney