Knowledge sharing crucial for development
There is a popular saying that "two heads are better one".
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The wisdom in this saying is based on the premise that knowledge does not reside in one person's head.
It is based on these old sayings that the Daily Graphic believes that the call by the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, at the maiden edition of the Graphic National Development Series in Kumasi recently is a step in the right direction.
Otumfuo Osei Tutu II urged the government to listen to knowledgeable voices on agriculture without dismissing them as mere critics.
He said advice and suggestions from experts in the sector should not be misconstrued as criticisms or opposition views but, rather, as their contributions to improve the sector for the benefit of all.
The Daily Graphic agrees with the Asantehene that a country like Ghana, that is mainly an agrarian economy, should not be importing food items such as rice, chicken, tomato to feed its people and be stifling the country of the needed foreign exchange.
This is because Ghana is blessed with the best environment and conditions favourable for farming throughout the entire country.
As a country, we have vast arable land, water bodies and enthusiastic farmers but it defies logic that we still have to import food items to feed the population.
Ghana can conveniently feed its citizens without sweat, if we are committed to doing so.
When the government introduced the Planting for Food and Jobs, the expectation was that within the shortest possible time, the issue of importation of food items, especially rice and chicken, would be a thing of the past.
Unfortunately, the trend remains and has not changed much to the level that we all desire, hence Otumfuo Osei Tutu II sees the need for the country to reverse the trend of high import bill and reduce the pressure on the demand for foreign exchange.
The call by the Asante King was spot on, especially with the experience of the outbreak of the COVID-19, which came with restrictions on export of food from developed countries as well as the impact of the Ukraine war on global food supply, are enough lessons to wake us up as a country to put our agriculture in order.
Interestingly, we have a renowned institution such as the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) that boasts of top-notch scientists in all the branches of agriculture and are well grounded in the area of developing new technology, improved and high-yielding crops and soil-texture management to ensure that crops are grown in the right type of soil.
We have good soil, good temperature, huge water bodies that can serve as a source for irrigation for all-year round farming and enough human resource for labour and sufficient expertise for agro-processing.
Ghana has no reason to import rice, tomatoes, chicken and all those agricultural-based products because we are more than capable of producing all of them locally.
Unfortunately, in Ghana, research in general is funding-constrained and so, most of our scientists, who have the capability to do great research to help the country are under-utilised.
It is high time the government showed the goodwill and the determination to fund research in the area of agriculture and its value-chain to ensure that the best agro-practices are observed.
What we need as a country is the political will to ensure that we eat what we grow and grow what we eat.
It is time we reduced the over-dependence on foreign importation and over-reliance on our taste for foreign goods to the detriment of our local ones.
This is the time for us, as a country, to unite beyond political affiliations to find and implement solutions to the problems bedeviling the agricultural sector.
The challenge we have is that the country has been polarised to the extent that party ‘A’ finds nothing good about what party ‘B’ does and vice versa.
Unless our politicians put Ghana first before their political parties, nothing can work for us as a country.
The time has come for us to do away with pettiness assoiated with partisan politics and unite to move our dear country forward.
We must be ready to share expertise first and foremost as Ghanaians before our political affiliations or biases.
