Private Sector Should Be Allowed To Frontline The Planting For Food And Jobs - PFAG Urges Gov't

• Attendees following the meeting
The Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG) has requested that the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative be led by the private sector.

It was stated that the government only needed to establish an enabling environment and provide policy directions.

According to the PFAG, the government could accomplish this by employing the Guinness Gha­na Brewery Limited outgrower scheme, which provided value to farmers and other actors in the value chain.

Dr. Charles Nyaaba, Executive Director of PFAG, made these recom­mendations when he presented the findings on "Assessment of the PFJ for the 2022 planting season" at a stakeholder validation and credibility workshop on the PFJ in Accra yesterday.

In March and April of this year, in 26 districts, the assessment targeted, among others, fertiliser and seed suppliers, input retailers, producers, and district and regional agriculture department officials.

The objective of the PFJ evaluation was to determine the efficacy of the program's implementation and its impact on beneficiary farmers, and to provide feedback to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) in order to enhance future PFJ implementation.

Dr. Nyaaba stated that using a transparent system to select aggregators and service providers would aid in the program's long-term viability.

According to him, farmers complained of minimal or nonexistent differences between open market and subsidized fertiliser for 2022, and "high transportation costs, exchange rates, and low subsidies" were to blame for price increases.

Dr. Nyaaba stated that farmers resorted to reducing their farm sizes, reducing the amount of fertiliser applied to their crops, shifting from the cultivation of excellent crops to other crops, and abandoning their farms to pursue other economic opportunities as a result of fertilizer price increases.

Regarding the credibility of the budget, he stated that the assessment found that the Ministry of Agriculture does not maintain a current and verifiable database of farmers, farm sizes under cultivation, farm locations, and crop types that could serve as an objective premise for planning and budgeting.

"It also discovered the government's inability to spend the agriculture budget as planned, which continues to impede efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 by 2030," he added.

Mr. Godson Aloryito, Programme Officer, International Budget Partnership (IBP), presented the findings of the "Review of Budget Implementation of Ghana's Fertilizer Subsidy Programme" and urged the government to strengthen budget credibility by releasing approved funds on time.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should improve its cash management, provide explanations for spending deviations in annual reports, enhance its planning, budgeting, and oversight mechanisms, and have the Audit Service conduct a value for money audit of the subsidy program and the PFJ," he added.

Mr. Bryan Acheampong, a representative of the Minister of Food and Agriculture, assured that the recommendations would be incorporated into the initiative's revised model to assist farmers and all other stakeholders.