Yara Ghana to pilot Farming Academy for the youth

Yara Ghana, leading mineral fertilizer manufacturer and distributor, is initiating a scheme to promote the business of agriculture among young people.

The ‘Farming Academy’ has the aim of driving students from the primary through to the senior high school level to learn best practices in crop production whilst appreciating opportunities in the agricultural sector.

“Yara is all about knowledge; we don’t believe we just sell fertilizer, but we bring the knowledge that comes with it”, said Mehdi Saint-André, Managing Director of Yara Ghana.

According to him, the Academy will discourage the perception that farming is a punishment and rather inculcate in students the knowledge and skills in land preparation, seed selection and fertilizer application as well as post harvest activities and storage.

The pilot project would be undertaken with inmates of the Royal Seed Home at Odupong Ofaankor, Kasoa, where the company has established a 15-acre maize farm to support the orphanage.

“Hopefully for the next farming season in March/April 2013, we’ll be ready and we’ll go on the farm with a group of children but it should be incorporated in the school curricula; if they have some topics which is about farming or agriculture, then they can go on the field with us to learn”, stated Saint-André.

He reiterated that Yara Ghana’s corporate social responsibility projects are fully integrated into its business with an objective to develop the productivity of the Ghanaian farmer.

He cited the ‘Yara Crop Clinic’ for product retailers and the Masara N’Arziki “Maize for Prosperity” projects as thriving CSR schemes to help increase knowledge and incomes among local farmers.

Meanwhile, Yara Ghana has commissioned a Gh₵20,000 potable water facility to meet the needs of the 145 inmates of the Royal Seed Home.

Founder of the Home, Mrs. Naomi Esi Amoah is excited at the gesture and appealed to other benevolent individuals and institutions to support in “caring for the children who need to be trained as future leaders with good vision”.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh

Interest groups call for reform of National Best Farmer Award Scheme

Farmers and other agricultural-based organizations are raising diverse concerns in the organization of the National Best Farmers Awards Scheme.

Agriculturists in Ghana are being honored on Friday at the national, regional and district levels for excelling in their farming and fishing businesses and contributing economic development.

Government is spending over 3.8 million Ghana Cedis to honour 74 farmers at this year’s National Best Farmers Awards ceremony.

But some interest groups say the scheme can be better organized to benefit majority of farmers.

The Agro Mindset Organization, an NGO, has acknowledged significant improvements in the scheme, but the group is worried the selection criteria favours wealthy large scale farmers to the detriment of the larger majority of small holder farmers.

It therefore wants government to implement a targeted screening regime, which focuses on quality of work than farm size to allow for small holder farm operators to also benefit from the goodies in National Farmer’s day award.

“We know there are District and Regional awards, but we think there should be a way to assess farmers, which could someday see smallholder farmers also winning the National Best Farmer award, thereby propelling them, higher up the wealth ladder, and it is only then that we would see the awards scheme promoting the agricultural sector as a whole, and not skewing solely for the benefit of already wealthy farmers” said a statement issued by the Organization.

Agro Mindset Organization has also called for a re-packaging of the award package “by scrapping the policy which allows for personal freebies such as houses and pick up vehicles worth thousands of Ghana cedis to be given, which does not in any way help improve upon the agriculture sector as a whole. And rather focus on giving out agricultural related sophisticated tools, equipments, and materials, which would in the end help further advance the agricultural sector as a whole”.

Meanwhile, a former District Best Farmer is advocating a review of processes in selection of district, regional and national best farmers.

According to Yaw Amankwah, the present arrangement leaves room for doubts and there wants the selection committee to promote fairness and transparency by publishing nominees and criteria for winners.

“After the select committee comes to your farm, I think it would be better for them to write back to you and tell you why you win or why you did not win”, he said.

Mr. Amankwah says this is important for the farmer to improve on farming practices to increase production.

The 28^th National Best Farmers Awards Ceremony was under the theme: “Grow more food: Strengthening Farmer Based Organisations for Market Place Bargaining Power”.

Thirty-Eight year old Lemuel Kwashie Martey of Mannah Farms Limited in Accra was adjudged the 2012 National Best Farmer.

In the Ashanti region, Thirty-eight year old Samuel Kofi Tettey from Akomadan-Afrancho in the Offinso North District emerged overall regional best farmer for Ashanti.

He cultivates diverse crops on acres of land, including, tomatoes, corn, yam, cassava, cocoa, cowpea, teak and oil palm, in addition to rearing cattle, grasscutter, poultry and snail farming.

The young man perfected his agricultural practice under the tutelage of his father and today he is proud to be in the business of farming.

“I’ll tell the youth that farming is good business. Someone may have completed university or secondary school but can’t find job; he may be selling polythene bag in Accra without a place to sleep; but if he choose to come to the village to give it a try, things could be better”, he entreated.

Major challenges to farm productivity, according to Samuel, include the uncertainty in weather patterns, non-availability of credit facilities and delays in release of government’s subsidy on fertilizer.

“We would appeal to government to release the fertilizer on time to help in our farming”, he said.

The Regional Farmers’ Day event was commemorated at Nkawie, in the Atwima Nwabiagya District.

Ashanti Regional Minister, Dr. Kwaku Agyemang-Mensah spoke on national theme: “Grow More Food: Strengthening Farmer-based Organizations for Market Place Bargaining Power”.

He noted that mobilizing farmers through the FBOs to increase access to technology, inputs and market for their produce is key to modernizing agriculture and improving human capacity for increased production.

“Government in recognition of the immense contribution of FBOs to agriculture development has through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture put in place measures to develop policy strategies for improved access of smallholder farmers to services as emphasized in the phase two of Ghana’s Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy (FASDEP II)”, the Minister noted.

Dr. Agyemang-Mensah added that the Ministry has outlined various policies for FBOs development including the setting up of FBO’s Secretariat at the MOFA, registration and monitoring of their activities and the establishment of FBO Development Fund.

Some of the FBOs presently operating in Ashanti region include the Pig Farmers Association, Cocoa Farmers Association, Rice Farmer Groups and Citrus Farmers Association.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh

Youth with ‘swag’ can succeed in agriculture

Cynthia Mosunmola Umoru is a young Nigerian lady passionately driving the beauty in agriculture in her home country. Proud to be a farmer, she’s got her swag – twitting @PrettyFarmer on her sleek tablet.

Cynthia produces food to feed her nation, and delights in inspiring other young persons to take up a profession in agribusiness.

Her company, Honeysuckle Ventures, distributes livestock produce to fast food companies and restaurants in Lagos and one of her farms is used for research and training of young farmers in the agri-food sector.

For Cynthia, it is critical that women and the youth focus less on the drudgery of agriculture and rather focus on the opportunities therein for financial independence and the nutritional security of families.

“If people are concerned about the quality of the food that they eat, they should be concerned about the quality of the produce that comes out of the farm…it means that we need to be involved” she noted. “Now if as women, as young people we love to eat, wear cloths, we love to spend money, then I think it’s critical that we begin to look closely at the agric sector”.

Cynthia inspires her peers not only in Nigeria but others of Africa to venture agriculture, a profession often perceived to be unattractive to today’s African youth.

“I think that people need to begin to look at the brighter side and then appreciate agriculture for what it is – a wealth creating platform. This is one sector that singly is capable of creating total employment across its value chain”, she added.

In Ghana, the government’s Youth in Agriculture Programme (YIAP) was established to increase employment opportunities and incomes, encourage entrepreneurship, and upscale food production.

With the average national farmer age at 55 years, the programme seeks to increase productivity in agricultural sector by tapping into the energy of the youth who compromise about 30percent of Ghana’s active population.

According to National Programme Coordinator, Alhaji Adam Mahama, the Ghanaian youth are interested in venturing agriculture but financial constraints remain major obstacle.

“My office, on daily basis, is filled with applications, proposals from youth, university graduates – both male and female – who are interested in going into agriculture but I’m constrained by funding”, he stated.

Alhaji Adam estimates that a minimum of Gh₵10,000 ($5,000) is needed to support a university graduate to be able to take off into full-time agriculture, but such funding is not readily available.

He however does not subscribe to the establishment of a fund by government to be accessed by the youth “because immediately government takes too much interest in funding such things, people don’t want to be independent”.

Hence, government should provide the farming inputs whilst the private sector is engaged in providing financial packages for such agricultural ventures, he opined.

“If a package is made in such a way that they take the money from the banks that they can use and pay back to the banks [and] account to the banks, then they’ll learn to be independent and good private sector”, noted Alhaji Adam.

Private sector agribusiness players believe the public-private partnerships are important to drive young people into agribusiness but this, they say, must be devoid of politics.

Prince Obeng Asante, Deputy Managing Director of Ghana Nuts Company, says concepts geared towards youth employment must move from a political platform to a pseudo-business organization for the private sector to buy into them.

“It should be partnership which is built on rock, not on sand which can easily be washed away when the political season comes to an end”, he observed.

Ghana Nuts is a leading agro processor, manufacturer and exporter of a gamut of edible oils, animal feed input materials and Shea Butter.

The company has been supporting the agricultural project under the National Service Scheme and recently received 4,000 bags of yellow maize from the NSS Wenchi Farm to produce feed for the local poultry industry.

The NSS project is making some inroads with an expected harvest in excess of eight metric tonnes of maize by end of 2012 from the combined 2,120 acres it is farming in five regions.

It is early days yet to ascertain what percentage of the young national service personnel engaged in the NSS agric project would opt for full-time ventures in farming or agribusiness at the end of their service.

But Prince Obeng says there is the need to critically show young people that agriculture could provide a dynamic and productive future for them.

Young people who see the profitability in agriculture will naturally move into the sector, he said.

“The cost of production vis-à-vis the revenue has been the major bottleneck; the guy is spending Gh₵1,000 per hectare and the revenue coming from it is Gh₵900, why do you think the youth will be there?” queried Prince. “But if today we say that you spend Gh₵1,000 but your revenue is Gh₵2,000, so the [profit] margin is Gh₵500, I tell you even the dead will resurrect and go into agriculture”.

To set the agenda right, Cynthia Mosunmola Umoru, who is currently a Youth Consultant to the African Union Commission, has emphasized the direct engagement of the youth in agricultural policy formulation whilst providing avenues for the youth to access mentors and role models to success in agribusiness.

Already, youth in agriculture is one of the driving issues on which the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) focuses its work.

“Granted that there are a lot of countries benefiting from oil and natural resources, but most of the countries in Africa today are primarily agriculture-based communities, so when you think about the future of agriculture you should start with the source which is the young people of Africa”, said James Tefft, Senior Policy Officer, FAO Regional Office for Africa.

He wants the subject of young people in agriculture to be embedded within national policies in the implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

He says investments in the agricultural sector should be about the people and integrating youth in agriculture is essential in addressing the demographic challenges.

“The policy framework in Ghana with respect to METASIP exists but we need to get into the specifics of how these partnerships between public and private actors actually take place… we need the young people, civil society [to be] engaged in the process. So to move forward, we need to move into the specific of the dialogues at very decentralized levels”, said James Tefft.

The Ghanaian government developed the Medium Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan (METASIP) to implement the Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy (FASDEP II) over the medium term 2011-2015.

Whilst expecting agricultural policies to be youth-centered, there is the potential for women and young people to strategically plug into the sector by “unlocking their minds and view agriculture as a business; it is not just about farming and tilling the soil – there is processing, packaging, distribution, cold storage, marketing – the opportunities across its value chain is enormous”, said Cynthia Umoru.

Transforming mindsets are the core values of the AgroMindset Organisation, which is educating a new generation of entrepreneurial minded agriculturists in Ghana.

“Our idea is using the bottom-up approach to transform youthful thinking from fork (state of consumption) to field (state of activity and productivity), and so we seek to introduce the concept of agric entrepreneurship to young people right from childhood”, said Founding Director, David Asiamah.

The Organization seeks to erase negative perceptions about farming, showcasing that it can bring people great wealth and prosperity, through strategies like organising the Agro Summit and Agro Tourism events, embarking on outreaches, undertaking Green projects and promoting agribusiness, innovation and entrepreneurship.

“We have visited over 5000 young people in basic schools and our meetings attract interested students and industry experts to learn and share ideas at the same time churning them into entrepreneurs”, he said.

Without a clear policy strategy for engaging this rising group of rural youth, Africa’s leaders and the development partners that work with them risk creating an economic time bomb for their successors, warned David Asiamah.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh

Youth for agric production or value chains?

The drive to strengthen agricultural value chains was strongly upheld at he recently held 2^nd African Green Revolution Forum in Arusha, Tanzania.

Most discussions touted the value chains as viable option to engage young people in agriculture.

According to Mr. Kofi Annan, Chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), there are opportunities for Africa to benefit from innovations in agriculture and information and communication technologies and for him, these new technologies appeal to the younger generation and give them opportunities to play a greater part in the agricultural revolution.

He added that it is this new generation of Africans – male and female – with their energy and entrepreneurial spirit that needs to contribute to create a sustained transformation.

But there are other concerns of how to replace the ageing farming population with energetic youth.

Kofi Adu Domfeh posed the question to Jane Karuku, President of AGRA, who says agriculture must first be seen to be profitable to attract the youth.

Thinking value chain for youth in agriculture

Agriculture, the backbone of Africa’s economy, is threatened by an ageing production population as young people turn away from farming, often thought to be difficult, time consuming, risky and not very profitable.

In Ghana for instance, majority of farmers are interested in empowering their children to take up professions other than farming as their future economic activity.

“No farmer is expecting the child to land on the farm because we don’t make agric a very good profession for it to be very attractive to the farmers themselves to be able to introduce their children into the practice,” observed Emmanuel Arthur, Managing Director of Kuapa Kokoo Company Limited, a farmers’ cooperative.

According to him, there is the urgent need to reflect on agricultural policies to ascertain business ideals and attractiveness to the youth, otherwise “we’ll get to a point that we’ll not be able to produce the food we eat, the cash crop that we export and the country could be in serious crises”.

Majority of the people engaged in agriculture are believed to be over 50 years old, hence calls for Africa to think critically about how to attract the youth to replace the aging farming population.

Suggestions include the integration of agriculture into school curricula, easy access to land, capital, technical knowledge and equipment for successful ventures.

Dr. Samuel Kojo Dapaah, a Special Advisor to Ghana’s Minister of Food and Agriculture, believes the youth should be better off so long as their concerns with agricultural mechanization, transportation, water and other basic amenities are provided.

However, there is growing advocacy to rather encourage the youth to get higher up in the agricultural value chain.

Some African researchers involved in the GDN Global Research Project, ‘Supporting Policy Research to Inform Agricultural Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia’, have strongly pointed to the need to shift from actual production at the farm house to value addition ventures for the youth.

At a recent workshop to present five policy briefing papers to help shape debates on agricultural policies in sub-Saharan Africa, Prof. Chris Ackello-Ogutu at the University of Nairobi, stated that young people would be more interested in value addition than actual production.

He said whilst it is important for the youth to change their mindset and attitude towards agriculture, they should be pushed to the value chains.

“We need to push for policies and strategies that can engage the youth in value addition higher up in the value chain and there are opportunities for that; providing extension services at the lower level and investing in processing and packaging and in public relations in the provision of market information”, stated Prof. Ackello-Ogutu.

Other opportunities for the youth in agriculture have been identified in food retail, catering, input supply and research – but these jobs generally require higher levels of education and different skills.

The 2012 international conference on “Young People, Farming and Food” debated research findings and policy options for youth engagement in agriculture.

It was observed that the agrifood sector in Africa, in the coming years, will undergo significant transformation that will result in both challenges and opportunities for young people.

Experts at the forum noted that policy interest in linking young people to agriculture should not ignore important drivers, trends and developments that are impacting on both young people’s aspirations and the structure of the agrifood sector.

Prof. Saa Dittoh, Head of Food Nutrition and Security at the University of Development Studies, Tamale says the marketing component of the agricultural value chain should be promoted.

According to the GDN policy paper on ‘Long-term Challenges to Food Security and Rural Livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa’, Africa’s urban populations and incomes are growing and with that will come greater demand for marketed food.

“The youth are becoming very innovative, so looking at the value chain and where they can fit in and not necessarily just on the farm but find out what they can do with the produce, is going to be very important”, observed Prof. Dittoh.

In November 2012, hundreds of public and private sector players in agriculture will be participating in an international conference on agricultural value chains in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Though the event has no specific focus on youth, youth employment may be touched on by the session being organized by International Labour Organization (ILO).

Senior Technical Advisor for Market-Led Development  at the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), Andrew W. Shepherd is uncertain “how policies could drive people into value chains as value chains depend, primarily, on satisfying consumer demand, but as demand increases for processed and semi-processed products there will be more employment opportunities”.

 

As the experts meet to develop a greater understanding of the factors necessary for value chains to thrive, it is expected that young people in Africa would share in the knowledge and experiences to venture the agricultural value chain for gainful employment and contribute to food security.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh
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