By Joseph Akim Gordon
Life of citizens depend on food supplies produced to sustain their livelihood, most of our population live in rural area more over agriculture is the lifeline for farmers and the rest of the population. For this reason, there is no need to make empty commitment and promises in agricultural development. The empty promises and commitment to fund agricultural development programs should not continue in this manner, we should now open new chapter, we have made declaration of peace with the same token we should now revitalize agriculture because it is the source of our livelihood where most of our people live.
The idea that we should buy grain and stoke our silos or granaries with enough to carter for emergencies in our situation is not workable, have we forgotten about the dura saga? Let us invest in agriculture and fill our silos or granaries with what we can produce and enrich our farmers. We have learned a lot from dura saga let us not repeat the mistake we made in the past, a good number of politicians are suggesting the idea of buying grain for emergency, they are creating a fertile ground to fatten their stomachs, as of now food politics is not workable.
There is no more room for empty promises and commitment as we all know food first whether you are a politician, a medical doctor, engineer and any other profession you need food to keep healthy and active in your profession, we also know that a hungry person is always angry, and lack of food is a source of political instability.
It is surprising that over the years, agriculture was ignored resulting to food insecurity, Budgets are prepared every year, but it remained a nominal budget so no significant funds released for agricultural development as such the country depended on food imports from the neighboring countries, we should realize that agriculture is not a free gift, in the beginning you must spend lots of resources that will later result to economic prosperity. We must, therefore, invest massively into agriculture and we can later realize continuous prosperity.
We have also noted that Development partners and NGO’s have contributed lots of resources into agriculture although they shifted later on to humanitarian intervention their contribution is much greater than that of the Government, development in the country is a full responsibility of the Government.
There are some fundamental issues that should have been put in place that will help agriculture to move forward for instance there should have been national research stations rehabilitated together with some sub-stations in some ecological zones and also rehabilitation of Agriculture and livestock and forestry training centers as of now all have not been rehabilitated. As of now we have less than 400 trained extension workers in the field, note that human and material resources must complement each other if we want to realize a breakthrough, capacity development for most staff at states level should be prioritized as most of the agricultural projects are to be in the states.
We have noted with satisfaction the formulation of comprehensive agriculture master plan (CAMP) and irrigation development master plan (IDMP) developed in 2012 and completed in 2015 covering crop, livestock, forestry, fisheries irrigation and institutional development it was blessed by council of ministers and the national assembly in 2017 This document is a road map for agriculture and other sectors unfortunately its budget was not approved by the Government. JICA and others supported the formulation of this document because of lack of budget the Government should have come out as to how this document can be implemented. JICA has continued to support CAMP and IDMP with technical and financial support and training of the staff.
The author can be reached through e-mail: akimgordon555@yahoo.com