Public Agenda (Accra)
21 April 2008
editorial
So it came to pass that on Thursday April 17, the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Mr. Ernest Debrah told journalists at the meet the presse that the soaring food prices is a global one and the determinant factors are beyond the control of government.
The minister announced that as an interim measure, government was soliciting support from its development partners to assist in the procuring of food and this will be supported by the government's own imports for strategic storage. In the same vein, he appealed to Ghanaians to promote the habit of consuming locally produced foodstuffs.
Mr. Debrah said also as a medium and long-term intervention, the government would intensify rice production in the country, especially the production of the NERICA variety in areas where it has a comparative advantage over maize production.
In addition, he said interactions were going on with market women and transport owners to find ways of minimizing the effect of transport costs on food prices.
Clearly, some of the measures the minister outlined were the things CSOs have been advocating to save farmers and their livelihoods while ensuring Ghana depends on home grown food for most of her needs.
How belated the government has realised to cultivate and eat local rice.
Can anybody imagine how crop yield can be increased despite the current high prices on fertilizer and inputs across the world, as the minister portrayed. To think about interacting with market women to find ways of minimising the effec of transportation on food prices amounts to giving the wrong prescription to a disease that has not been properly diagnosed. The minister knows more than we do that the high cost of feul is the single most important factor affecting the food prices. For that reason, there is little the market women can do.
This newspaper has said it time and again that the government's decision to move World Bank and IMF policies wholesale without considering their longterm effects on our food sovereignty is the cause of Ghana being reduced to a net importer of cereals like rice.
Instead of government sourcing for funds to import foodstuffs the government should set specific tariff bench marks over a period of time to enable it raise funds to develop the agricultural sector. Though the minister would want Ghanaians to believe that there is enough food in stock to prevent shortage, the fact that bulk of it is an imported is indictment on our agricultural policy.
The minister though, acknowledged that the increasing food prices is the result of climate change, competing demand for land for the production of biofuels and the increasing prices of agro inputs, especially fertilizer. How else does the government expect increase in food production when farm inputs are beyond the reach of farmers?
On the front page of this newspaer is the story of how a Norwegian biofuel company took advantage of Africa's traditional system of communal land ownership and current climateand economic pressure to claim and deforest large tracts of land in the Kusawgu Traditional Area of Northern Ghana; with the intention of creating "the largest jatropha plantation in the world". A similar track of land has been acquired at Afram Plains for the cultivation of jatropha to the detriment of food production.
By passing official development authorization and using methods that hark back to the darkest days of colonialism, this investor claimed legal ownership of these lands by deceiving an illiterate chief to sign away 38,000 hectares with his thumb print.
The discovery of the cleared land brought the realization that the battle against land grabbing and community disempowerment was no longer just happening in other countries, but also in Ghana and the earlier we stood up to fight such land grabbing the better for Ghana..
Strangely, but quite expectedly is that the facts that emerged in the Northern Region land grabbing is that - a big fish in government was promoting the project and had deployed his business associates in the region to front for him bilk the illeterate chief and his people of several hectares of land.
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