Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture has improved the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ (PFJ) programme to make room for more modules.
Sector Minister Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, an agric economist, who is the brain behind the PFJ, which has revolutionized agriculture in the country, said the government was supporting his ministry to introduce four new other programmes under the initiative.
New Modules
He told Daily Guide exclusively last Thursday that new modules include the Greenhouse Villages programme, Planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD) programme, Rearing for Food and Jobs (RFJ) campaign and Mechanization Centers programme.
He said the “transformation of the agricultural sector has far reaching positive consequences for rural transformation and ‘Ghana Beyond Aid,” adding that the NPP administration under President Akufo-Addo is determined to change the structure of the economy by using agriculture as the pivot.”
The minister said the PFJ campaign “set out to reverse the declining performance of agriculture, characterized by low yields due to low use of improved inputs, poor access to markets, high cost of production and post-harvest losses, among others, and we are on course to make that happen.”
Investment Drive
“The policy instruments used have yielded significant results and giving the impetus to government to scale up investments,” he said.
The minister said “after two years of providing input support to farmers, significant yield increases have been recorded for the targeted crops under the PFJ.”
He said for instance that “maize yield increased from 1.8mt/ha to 3.0mt/ha recording 67 percent increase; rice yield increased by 48 percent from 2.7mt/ha to 4.Omt/ha and soya yield equally increased by 150 percent from l mt/ha to 2.5mt/ha.”
Dr Afriyie Akoto said that the ministry exceeded targets of farmers participating in the input support programme under PFJ in 2017 from 200,000 to 202,000 and added that in 2018 it again exceeded the target from 500,000 to 677,000 farmers in 2018.
“There is the overwhelming evidence of increased demand by farmers to participate in the programme,” he said.
The minister said that “the strategy for targeting crops has been to focus on crops with high potential for food security, import substitution and raw material for industry.”
He said in 2017, the focus was on crops such as maize, rice, sorghum, soyabean and vegetables but in 2018 the attention was switched to cassava, orange, sweet potato and groundnuts.
“Three more crops- plantain, yam and cowpea- will be added in 2019 with emphasis on post-harvest management of plantain and yam.”
By William Yaw Owusu