Don’t go into farming – Ken Agyapong warns the youth

The Member of Parliament for Assin Central, Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, has warned the teeming unemployed youth not to go into farming

According to him, it is a gamble that won’t pay off.

“When you wake up in the morning and you pray that God let me be poor that’s when you go into farming… because I have been there,” he stated in a Joy News interview, monitored by theghanareport.com. 

The MP’s position contrasts the government’s policy on agriculture, which it calls ‘Youth in Agriculture’ under the aegis of the  Ministry of Agriculture.

Under the Policy, the youth are being encouraged to go into farming with the government providing seedlings and agriculture support services.

But Mr Agyapong doubted the support the government was proving for the policy saying “I challenge the government to tell us what the inputs are for farmers. They are asking people to go into farming, but where is the incentive for them to go into farming, they are just talking”.

“If I complete university, read my lips, I am a politician and I am saying I will not go into farming, “he stressed.

Although the majority of Ghana’s workforce are into agriculture, food security and an increasing food import bill is a concern, compared to western economies whose farming population is less, but are able to produce to feed their countries and also export.

Apart from challenges with funding, commercial farmers in the country maintain that there are gaps in the information required by various operators in the sector, both of which need to be dealt with at the highest level of the institutions that play various roles to ensure that an enabling, conducive and transparent environment for investment in the agricultural sector was created.

A major concern of commercial farmers in the country is that a lot of the government’s interventions go to small-scale farmers, while commercial farmers are left on their own to source funds and also pay market rates.

Those challenges seem to be a disincentive for the Assin Central MP.

“The government is asking the youth to go into farming, let them give you incentives, elsewhere, US, UK all over advance countries, they give subsidies to their farmers, ask the farmers how much subsidies are given to them” he argued.

Sharing his experience in farming, Ken Agyapong said he had over 595 acres of rice farm in his constituency, but couldn’t make a profit from that venture due to thievery.

The MP said it was frustrating to take businesses such as farming into the villages, adding that it was not encouraging for the youth to venture into such an enterprise as the frustrations would deter them.

He mentioned thievery by the locals and land litigation as some of the major challenges facing farmers in the country.

“Taking business to the village, you will think they are stupid but they are the cleverest people in terms of thievery, the moment you establish a business in the village they think you are stupid.

“I have factories coming up around the Tema, Prampram area if you’re ready to work, I will invite you from my village to come,” he said.