The government over the years has attempted to stimulate youth interest in agriculture, as part of efforts to reduce ‘youth unemployment’ in the country.
Through Youth in Agriculture initiative, credit facilities for youth involved in agricultural production and processing have been provided. Additionally, private organisations with government support have also provided internship and training opportunities for youths to create and sustain agricultural enterprises.
Despite the laudable initiatives, the involvement of youth into the agricultural sector remains negligible at best – the core of the jobs being more of manual labour than anything else.
With the current farming population consisting largely of the aged and barely literate farmers, the need to attract the youth becomes even more compelling.
However, all attempts at so doing have not been successful because agriculture is perceived by many rural youth as a route to drudgery, hence their continued mass migration to urban areas in search of a ‘better life’.
As a matter of fact Ghana’s agriculture is mostly run by smallholder farmers who are fully operating under subsistence farming. This operation is faced with a lot of challenges such as low productivity because of non-accessibility to inputs, lack of finance and information, inadequate knowledge sharing, problem of marketing their produce and hosts of others.
Other major deterrent factors include poor infrastructure, technical know-how in the areas of produce handling and storage to ensure quality production, have made the sector less attractive to youth.
No doubt the agricultural sector has not been able to fulfil its major role of feeding the vast population, meeting the raw material needs of industries, providing substantial surplus for export for the country to earn foreign exchange to aid development.
In fact, the current state of agriculture infrastructure in many parts of the country has been identified as one of the reasons for the high level of the migration among able-bodied youths to urban areas.
Youths do not want to stay in rural areas because there is poor infrastructure and move to cities. Because of that, the agriculture in villages is losing its workforce which reduces its outputs. Many farmers still stick to archaic farming practices.
It is for this reason that the Ghanaian Times considers the call for the rehabilitation of the Vea Irrigation Project in the Upper East Region, by the youth farmers as timely.
The youth appealed to the government to rehabilitate the broken canals and laterals of the facility to enable them to engage in dry season farming.
According to the leader of the group, Apiko Ayorogo, as a result of the erratic rainfall patterns experienced in the region, yields from the farming season were not always enough to feed most families throughout the year and added that, dry season irrigation activities were all that they needed to supplement their yields.
Now we know the main problems of the youth in agriculture in that part of the country and we believe that it is not beyond the government to assist the young farmers who unlike their colleagues have decided to stay back home and irk a living through agriculture.
We believe that, the district assembly can move in to repair the facility and in addition train them to maintain it so that it can change the current situation and provide them the opportunity to engage in an all year round farming and if for nothing at all, produce to feed their families at least.
