Assemblies ignore agric - studies reveal

About 86 per cent of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) are not budgeting for agriculture, some studies have shown. 

Analyses by some civil society organisations (CSOs) have shown that district assemblies (DAs) often concentrate on allocating resources for the provision of education and health infrastructure (the tangibles ones) but not in providing services that will help farmers to increase production, improve on their agronomic practices or help in the uptake of technology.

They further found that assemblies that budget for agriculture only do so for farmers’ day celebration with respect to logistics.

The Country Director of SEND Ghana, Mr George Osei-Bimpeh, told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS, that there seems to be a disconnection between the national agenda on agriculture modernisation and what MMDAs do. 

“Though I am not saying that it’s not important, it requires a balanced attention to all the sectors of the economy. If we are talking about complete decentralisation and actually emphasising a lot more on fiscal decentralisation, the onus rest on the assemblies to build the economic potential and capacity of the citizens so that where they have to raise resources to finance projects in their jurisdiction, they can look at the citizens themselves because they would have invested in their economic capacity and succeed in making them liable to pay taxes,” he said. 

Focusingon agriculture 

The studies found that most DAs are obsessed with the provision of tangible development projects, which they can point to when the need arises.

The low attention to the sector has negative implications on food security generally, it found.

Mr Osei-Bimpeh said if the DAs were serious about using agriculture as a model to reducing poverty in their jurisdictions, the best thing that they would want to do was to support agriculture. 

“Supporting agriculture during farmers’ day celebration is not so helpful.  There is that disconnect so we don’t see the assemblies themselves showing so much interest in promoting agric,” he said. 

2016 Budget 

The Ministry of Agriculture as part of its agricultural modernisation and food security programme assembled and sold to farmers, 77 SAME tractors, 49 power tillers, 20 rice threshers, eleven rice reapers and six rice mills with their respective components in 2015. 

In 2016, the ministry will procure 50 tractors with components to support Agricultural Mechanisation Services Enterprise Centres (AMSECs).