Over two thousand Ghanaian farmers and fishers will today [Friday] December 4, be rewarded by government for their enormous contribution to the growth of the economy.
Farmers’ Day, which is celebrated annually on the first Friday of December, is aimed at motivating and rewarding farmers for the role they play in the provision of both food and cash crop.
This year’s celebration is under the theme “Transform Ghana: Investing in Agriculture.”
Speaking to Citi News, the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Fiifi Kwetey, said the theme is in line with government’s vision of investing in the agric sector.
He said government is putting in place measures to boost investment in the sector despite a rather steady decline in the sector’s growth.
Government in the 2016 budget admitted that the crop sub-sector, where most of the nearly five million farmers are located, shrunk by 1.7 percent, while the entire agriculture sector grew by 0.04 percent.
“The investments we are talking about is not only about government, we are talking about investment coming from the people who are coming from the various value chain of agriculture. In what ways can we get them increasing their own investment into their various sectors in order for us to see much more productivity.”
The Minister added that his outfit is adopting ways of encouraging individuals to invest their monies into the sector so that “instead of keeping their little savings into treasury bills which earns them little money, they could think of how they can leverage those monies into agriculture production.”
This year’s national event is taking place at the Bolgatanga Girls Senior High School Park in the Upper East Region, although there would be various regional district events across the country.
In all 78 farmers from all the ten regions of the country are expected to pick various categories of awards.
