MoFA begins farm service programme
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) has initiated the pilot phase of a new programme to establish farm service centres in the country.
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Presently, about five of the multi-purpose centres have been completed and are expected to be one-stop shops for the provision of services such as mechanisation, fertiliser distribution, extension services and produce marketing and access to credit facilities to farmers.
“The government intends to set up 45 of the centres within the savanna zone and five at non-savanna zone before the end of the year,” the sector Minister, Alhaji Mohammed Muniru-Limuna, disclosed to the Daily Graphic in Tamale.
He was speaking at a dialogue on agricultural mechanisation organised in Tamale by TechnoServe Ghana in collaboration with MoFA with the aim of ensuring that farmers in the country get easy access to various modern agricultural machinery to improve productivity.
It was on the theme, “Developing a Home-Grown Sustainable Model for Agriculture Mechanisation along the Value Chain.”
Alhaji Muniru-Limuna indicated that the government was committed to mitigating the challenges facing the agricultural sector through the implementation of various projects.
He mentioned the Ghana Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (GIRSAL) and Farmers Service Centre Projects as some of the projects the government was using to achieve its agenda.
“GIRSAL will mitigate the risks associated with agricultural projection through its six pillars of risk sharing, insurance, digital finance, bank rating, bank incentive and technical assistance,” he stated.
He added that the government would soon start a green revolution programme to provide comprehensive mechanised services in the nature of visible access to implements, inputs, advisory services, credit and competitive market.
Challenges
Stating the challenges facing the agricultural sector, the Deputy Country Director of TechnoServe Ghana, Mr Samuel Baba Adongo, said over the years, the sector had been characterised by low productivity and low technology adoption.
“As a result, communities in northern Ghana are stuck in a cycle of subsistence farming and for many households, low agricultural growth means poverty and malnutrition,” he noted.
He mentioned lack of access to agricultural technology, markets, poor infrastructure and a short farming season as some of the challenges impeding the growth of the agricultural sector.
These challenges, he said, had resulted in reduced yield in the sector despite the ongoing interventions in the form of subsidies and development aid.
He was confident that the initiative would complement efforts aimed at lifting growth in agriculture to appreciable levels in the near future.
Highlighting mechanisation
Recently, efforts aimed at raising the agricultural sector have centred on ensuring easy access to high, quality seeds and fertiliser with less focus placed on mechanisation.
Although resilient seeds and fertile soil are essential to higher yields and improved quality, increasing globalisation means less attention is now paid to old ways of farming which Ghanaian farmers are still attached to.
This is disingenuous to the sector. For instance, a 2012 field survey found that it took about 30 hours for a farmer using only a hand hoe to prepare one hectare of land for planting.
For animal traction, it will take only 3.25 hours while a farmer with a tractor will require just one hour to plough the same piece of land.
Although many people have often attributed the less patronage of mechanised inputs by farmers to cost, the survey found that it cost less comparatively to use such inputs.
According to the survey, the service charge for land preparation per hectare was US$5.67 for people using draught animals and US$6.47 and US$7.09 for those using hand and tractor respectively.
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Beyond the cost element, the time required to prepare land through manual and draught animal practices placed farmers at a risk of missing the planting windows.
Timeliness of operations, quality of tillage, appropriate spacing and depth of seed placement and reduced post-harvest losses are benefits of mechanisation that should not be overlooked.
Technology alternative, specifically mechanised production, using tractors and appropriate implements, are necessary to increase productivity and yield beyond the level that inputs alone are able to achieve.