Catching them young with school farms

The pledge by the Minister of Agriculture, Dr Eric Opoku, when he was being vetted by Parliament’s Appointments Committee the other day, that he would institutionalise school farms in our senior high schools (SHS) if given the nod by Parliament, evoked interesting memories of my school farm experience back in secondary school in the 1980s.

Campus nostalgia

Our school farm was a vibrant part of life on campus for a couple of reasons. First, agricultural science was a compulsory subject for all Forms One, Two and Three students, so every student visited the farm at one point or the other for some practical work.

The outdoor experience was a welcome relief from the tedium of being stuck in class cramming the symptoms of a cow in heat (estrus), soil pH levels or the botanical names of various plants, fruits and vegetables at the feet of our tutor, Mr Amankwah, who we affectionately called ‘Akinsami’.

I quite enjoyed the subject and took it further up to the ‘O’ level in Form Five as my science subject, even if it was to avoid General Science, which I dreaded. 

Perhaps my most memorable school farm experience was the sight of a pig giving birth to several piglets at a go one afternoon.

It was quite a fascinating sight with a mild touch of trauma, and the memory of the piglets slithering out of their mother one after the other has not left me.  

Farm visits also included performing various tasks such as weeding or uprooting tree stumps as punishment for infringing school rules, which gave the whole school farm experience a bittersweet edge.

Sadly, as with many schools up and down the country, our school farm eventually went into extinction, with classroom blocks and laboratories now occupying the once-thriving green expanse.

Benefits

Admittedly, there could be some practical limitations in institutionalising the return of school farms universally due to land space in some urban schools.

In day schools, where students are unavailable in the late afternoons and on weekends, this could also be problematic.

But I believe a significant number of schools have the capacity and space to roll it out and thus provide vital support for their boarding house menu.

In the 1970s, with General Acheampong’s government’s ‘Operation Feed Yourself’ (OFY) programme in full swing, secondary schools got involved in their own small way by investing heavily in the school farm concept, with significant dividends.

At Opoku Ware School, for instance, the school farm supplied corn and pepper cultivated by the students to the school kitchen for over one term in the 1972/73 academic year, and the school went on to win the 3rd prize in the OFY regional championship, for which it was presented with a big tape recorder by the Ministry of Agriculture. No doubt this prized prize must have been quite a boost to the quality of Saturday night entertainment.

It was the only city school in the region to win a prize. 

More importantly, beyond boosting school menus, school farms could give practical meaning, particularly for those students who offer agricultural science.

Catching them young

The obvious benefit, under the old system of secondary education, of every student compulsorily studying agricultural science for the first three years, was that it provided a sound, basic appreciation of agricultural concepts and practices.

For a country whose agriculture contributes to 54 per cent of its GDP, accounts for over 40 per cent of its export earnings and provides 90 per cent of its food needs, it is important that we mainstream agriculture in a meaningful, practical way.

Again, back in the 1970s, as party of the OFY agenda, there was a deliberate effort to encourage citizens to own backyard gardens, where they could grow several food items, from okra to tomatoes to pepper to support the family menu.

Sadly, today, many would prefer to tile over their entire courtyards in pursuit of ‘modernity’, while the high-rise residential buildings and compound houses in our cities make it literally impossible for many to have these backyard gardens.

Of course, one does not have to study agricultural science in school to become a farmer.

But if we are to ‘catch them young’ and attract the best minds into farming, then we need to make it more interesting and catchier for our young citizens through school farms, even if agricultural science is not taught in the majority of our schools.

That means, for instance, an end to the idea of making students weed school compounds or work on school farms as punishment, because psychologically it reinforces a notion in young minds that farming is punishment.

It also means bringing on board successful commercial farmers, including Farmers’ Day award-winners to interact with and mentor students in a bid to demonstrate that the narrative of the peasant, subsistence farmer with crude basic implements need not represent the farming industry, and that farming can be financially rewarding and fulfilling.

It means finding innovative means to make school farms a fun place to be.

The Kosmos Innovation Centre’s AgricTech Challenge and School Farm Competition are wonderful private sector-driven initiatives in this direction that need more visibility.

I believe the Ministries of Education and Agriculture could collaborate effectively to drive and sustain students’ interest in farming in general, and I hope the respective Ministers will make this a reality.

In all of this, we should, as a nation, continue to do more to promote modern, large-scale, commercial farming as businesses as pertains elsewhere, with ready access to finance for start-up farmers.

We must catch our farmers young if we are serious about food sustainability. 

Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng.
E-mail: rodboat@yahoo.com