The District Chairman of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, Reverend John Akaribo, has noted with concern that phase one of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme was poorly implemented and has not yielded its intended purpose.
He noted that the programme, since its implementation, has been unable to make available fertilisers, improved seeds, or even water for farmers in enough quantities; a situation the policy sought to address.
Rev. Akaribo revealed this when he spoke to Mark Smith on A1 Radio’s Daybreak Upper East Show on the review of PFJ phase one and the way forward following the launch of PFJ 2.0.
He noted that food production has declined, noting that “I have been on vegetable production since 1982, and at Vea Dam alone we were doing about 1600 hectares of vegetable production and 800 hectares of rice production, but today in the whole Via project there is nothing going on there; what we would rather see is people going to the jungle to farm, which was not the case in the past.”
“It is now the youth who are making heavy investment in agriculture that we see and think it is the policy that has brought all those things. I have always maintained that farming is something that is bequeathed to us, and whether there is policy or not, that is the only employment or enterprise that our people live on, so we don`t bother whatever policies are there,” he added.
According to him, the PFJ aimed at alleviating food insecurity in the country, but that has not been realised as food imports continue to rise; exposing the shortfall of the policy.
He said the fundamental component of improving agriculture is the availability of water, but that has not been addressed, pointing out that the Vea Dam was constructed in 1965 and has not received any major rehabilitation.
This, he noted, is a blow to agriculture and has defeated the purpose of the policy, and there is a need for phase two of the program to address this going forward.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Gilbert Azeem Tiroog|Ghana
