How Do We Meet The Real Needs Of Ghana's Small-Holder Farmers?

One of the biggest problems facing smallholder farmers in Ghana is the terrible void in farming, created by the weakening of institutional support, occasioned by the unfortunate change in the structure and vision of the ministry of agriculture’s extension services, over the years – as a direct result of the strictures of the IMF and the World Bank. 

 Another of the constraints that farmers in Ghana face is the dreadful effect on the agricultural sector, of the lack of original thinking exhibited daily by a political class that is void of imagination – and many of whose members seldom do any truly world-class creative thinking (of the kind that Nkrumah engaged in throughout his years in power) that results in long-lasting solutions to our nation’s major problems. 

Incidentally, that is why some of us are waiting patiently, for example, for the day when Ghana’s politicians will end their love-affair with building badly-designed and poor quality roads: when it finally dawns on them that they are wasting taxpayers’ money concentrating solely on building roads that never last because of the kickbacks they demand from road contractors – and at last wake up to the fact that it is only by developing a truly modern and nationwide railway network as part of an integrated mass-transportation system, that we will remove the major bottlenecks in our transportation system: and make markets that much more accessible to smallholder farmers in Ghana, and at a cost far more reasonable than that charged them by the accident-prone road transport sector (Ghana’s “killing-fields” ). But I digress.

The response of the President’s press secretary, Mr. Ayariga, when he tried to explain away newspaper stories that implied that he had used his influence to get the ministry of agriculture to allocate a tractor to him, not too long ago, is a telling case in point: about how most of officialdom still lives in the anything-goes pre-global warming era. 

According to him, he purchased the tractor in question, simply to provide tillage services to farmers in his part of the country, at reasonable rates, in order to assist them. 

Yet, at a time of global climate change, any politician who cares about the farming sector, and cares about food safety issues such as the worldwide demand for traceability and transparency in the food chain, ought to work to encourage no-till farming that will prevent the widespread destruction of soils in our country: which are a direct result of the unnecessary land tillage that widespread tractor-usage brings in its wake. 

This is precisely the time to promote environmentally-friendly organic farming, so that we can move away from the kind of old-style, pre-global warming era of intensive farming, with its dependence on synthetically compounded additives in animal feed products, pesticides, and fertilizers. 

The question is: Why do our leaders not rather think of smallholder farmers as stewards of our natural heritage – through whom Ghana’s climate-change amelioration initiatives can be channeled at the grassroots level: and who will become agents of sustainable rural development, as we encourage them to practice organic farming as the way forward for sustainable wealth creation in the agricultural sector of Ghana’s economy?

Surely, we ought to encourage government agencies, such as the extension services of the ministry of agriculture and the Rural Enterprises Project (REP) organisation, to use the methods and developmental models of sustainable development organisations, such as: the American NGO Fearless Planet; the American green-farming guru Ken Hargesheimer's (whom the Ivory Coast has already invited to teach smallholder farmers his farming methods, by the way) Mini-Farms no-till movement; and the South African sustainable livelihoods organisation, Sustainable Villages Africa (SVA), for those reasons? 

Why do we not use NGOs to help smallholder farmers grow trees, adopt biochar for carbon sequestration, for example – and above all, enable them benefit from the nascent global market in carbon credits: so that they will come to understand that they have a financial stake in the preservation of our nation’s biodiversity? 

A perfect example of market-driven sustainable development that creates wealth for smallholder farmers in Ghana, is the American NGO Fearless Planet’s positive social entrepreneurial intervention in Kade, in Ghana’s Eastern Region – where it is partnering a group of Ghanaian women smallholder farmers to cultivate and market organically grown oil palm: in a project that has dramatically changed their lives and improved their living standards considerably. In addition to local sales, they are also exporting their oil palm to a fair trade American soap manufacturer.

 

There are many such possibilities for other farmer-based groups throughout the country. Many of the leading supermarkets in urban Ghana, such as the South African supermarket chain, Shoprite, for example, are all keen to source as much of their requirement for fruit and vegetables from Ghanaians farmers – but precious few of smallholder farmers in our country have the capacity to enable them secure such deals. 

They must be helped to access such markets. It is for that reason that organisations that work at the grassroots level, such as Fearless Planet; REP; National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI); and the Community Resource Management Support Centre, must all benefit from the funding for Africa’s agricultural sector promised by the G8 nations. 

Those critical organisations, in addition to the research institutions of the Council for Industrial and Scientic Research (CSIR) that handle agricultural research, are so important in the scheme of things in the new era we have now entered: as a result of the dramatic change in climatic conditions worldwide, due to global warming. 

If we really want Ghanaian smallholder farmers to benefit from the resources that the G8 nations say they will make available to that sector of the African economy, then let our leaders consult the them directly at the grassroots level for their input about what help they need from officialdom to jump-start the economies of their villages, in “village-square meetings” – rather than end up spending almost all the proposed G8 funds on those mostly-unproductive seminars and workshops, so beloved of the predatory experts and consultants: who have turned poverty-alleviation into such a lucrative growth industry in Africa: which enables them live off the fat of the land (in this instance, that of poor smallholder farmers in Ghana – if we allow them to lobby our leaders for that end, that is).

At the end of the day, we must have land reform that will take away land currently held in trust for their people by traditional rulers (many of whom simply sell such land and either pocket the proceeds, or share them with their most influential palace lackeys), for redistribution to landless tenant farmers – after paying fair compensation for the state acquiring such land for redistribution to smallholder farmers countrywide: as well as to any young people desirous of leaving the urban areas to farm. 

We must aim to ensure that every smallholder has the means to diversify their farming business by doing one or a few of the following in addition to growing food crops (among other things, i.e.), if they are so inclined: keep a few sheep or goats if that is possible for them; rear grasscutters or snails if that is feasible for them; do some fish-farming or snail-farming; do some beekeeping or grow mushrooms. 

Above all, let each farmer grow a few economic trees such as mangoes, avocado pears, or Moringa oleifera – or even do a little agro-forestry, growing some of our fast-disappearing tree species, as the depletion of our forests continue apace: if they have enough land to do so. 

All that must be made possible by providing small grants to all Ghana’s smallholder farmers – which is far better than the current idiocy of selecting a few poor households and creating a dependency-culture in rural Ghana, by giving them cash handouts: just so that cynical and corrupt politicians can say they are doing something about fighting poverty.

It is far better to teach a man or woman to fish, or provide them the wherewithal to buy seeds or breeding stock for livestock farming: and getting an additional income-stream that way, in my humble view. We must also set up a special fund with low interest rates at not more than 3 per cent and long grace periods, from which smallholder farmers can borrow to buy inputs – and the current government must be congratulated for subsidizing fertilizers: although they ought to move away from synthetic fertilizers to organic fertilizers. 

The cocoa husks and other waste from cocoa farms can all be turned into organic fertilizer on smallholder cocoa farmers’ farms – if the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCBOD) can invite the Swedish green activist Folke Günther to teach such farmers how to make use of his simple pyrolysis retort for making biochar. 

Even that could enable such cocoa farmers leverage the carbon offset markets, perhaps. 

Let the Mills administration directly consult as many individual smallholder farmers and farmer-based organisation at the grassroots level countrywide, as they possibly can – to ensure that they can fashion a new agricultural policy that will enable us achieve food security: through the predominant use of environmentally-friendly smallholder organic farming as a national goal: particularly at a time when the very survival of the whole of humankind is threatened by global climate change.