Commercial farming needed to transform Ghana’s agric sector – Senyo Hosi
Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors [CBOD], Senyo Hosi, has said commercial farming is needed to transform the country’s agriculture sector.
Making the assertion at the 2021 Volta Trade and Investment Fair on Thursday, November 18, 2021, Mr Hosi averred government must acknowledge the transformational role and impact of commercial farming on the agricultural sector and support people to venture into commercial farming.
“It is commercial farming that will transform agriculture in our country. We must acknowledge that and try to support people in doing so and leverage them to impact small-holder operatives and farmers,” he remarked.
Commercial Farming is a type of farming that uses higher doses of modern inputs – high-yielding variety seeds, chemical fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides – to achieve higher productivity.
A plantation is a form of commercial farming where a single crop is cultivated in a wide area. Dairy farming, grain farming, livestock ranching, fruit farming and horticulture are all various forms of commercial farming.
The call for increased commercial farming in the country by Mr Hosi is in the right direction as the agriculture sector employs over 60 percent of the country’s labour force and is a major contributor to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Amid the heat of the Covid pandemic in 2020, agriculture was the only real sector that recorded growth with the industry and services sector shrinking and recording negative growth rates.
The sector in Q2 2020 recorded a growth of 2.5 per cent with the industry and services sectors shrinking by 5.7 per cent and 2.6 per cent respectively. Despite the devastating effects of the pandemic on the real sectors of the economy, agriculture since the advent of the Covid pandemic continues to outgrow the industry and services sectors.
Read This: 2022 Budget: Services and Agric sectors expand but Industry contracts by 1.3%
According to the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) robust growth in the Agriculture and Services sectors – particularly the Agriculture sector – for the second quarter of 2021 resulted in a positive Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 3.9 percentage points.
Presenting the 2022 budget, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta noted Agricultural sector for the first half of 2021 continued its robust performance recording a growth rate of 4.3 percent ahead of the Services and Industry sectors.
The main drivers of growth in the Agriculture Sector, the Minister for Finance noted, were the Livestock and the Crops sub-sectors, which expanded by 5.5 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively.
The Fishing sub-sector, however, witnessed a contraction of 3.6 percent for the period.
World Bank values Ghana’s agriculture sector at $12.1 billion
Ghana’s agriculture sector, according to the World Bank Group commanded a total value of $12.1 billion in 2019.
According to the Bretton Wood institution, the sector’s contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the same year was 17.3 percentage points recording an annual average growth rate of 5.2 percent between 2017-2020.
Adding that, some 44.7 percent of the country’s total labour force was employed in the agric sector in the same year.
