The National Democratic Congress (NDC) spokesperson on agriculture, Dr Peter Boamah Otokunor, has said the creation of farmer service centres and agro-industrial enclaves will help transform Ghana’s agricultural sector.
Speaking with The High Street Journal, Dr Otokunor said Ghana has been faced with huge challenges in the agricultural industry, hence leading to high importation costs. Therefore, these issues about no storage facilities, expensive farming materials, high cost of fertilizers and climatic conditions, he said, must be addressed efficiently to ensure food security in the country.
Speaking on the solutions to transform the agricultural sector, he said the NDC government will set up farmer service centres in every district across the country to support farmers with modern agricultural technologies and equipment.
These farmer service centres would be pivotal in transforming agriculture by providing farmers with access to the latest farming technologies, equipment, and inputs. This initiative is designed to make farming more efficient and productive, ultimately enhancing food security and creating jobs.
The objective of establishing the farmer service centres he said, is to provide a bundle of quality services to members at affordable costs, to generate income for their cooperatives, to create employment for members and more specifically the youth and to mitigate climate change impact on their cocoa production.
Dr Otokunor said also added that a carefully designed Agro-industrial enclaves would be established that would operate around the clock, and supported by economic incentives, technical support, efficient logistics, supply chain development programmes, cold storage facilities, and export channels.
“This will generate in its wake a large demand for agricultural output as raw materials, which drive further the demand for the agricultural products and for that matter huge investments and market opportunities for smallholder and large-scale commercial farmers,” he said.
He said this is a call to creating a strong value chain, incentivizing agro-processors to scale up operations and ensuring that no harvest goes to waste. “It is about maximizing the potential of agricultural produce to create sustainable well paid jobs as farmers, factory workers, technicians, and logistics managers.”
Additionally, he announced the creation of Farm Banks within designated agricultural zones to provide farmers with easier access to land and irrigation facilities, facilitating large-scale farming and encouraging young people to pursue careers in agriculture.
He urged Ghanaians to back the NDC’s vision for a thriving agricultural sector that would underpin the country’s sustainable development.
