There is a sharp decline in agricultural growth from 7.4 per cent in 2008 and 7.2 percent in 2009 to 5.3 percent in 2010 and 0.8 percent in 2011, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Minority spokesperson on agriculture has said.

Addressing a press conference in Accra on Thursday, 3 November, the Kwadaso legislator said the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) share in the difficulty which farmers and fishermen in Ghana have to contend with under the Mahama administration.

Reviewing the performance of the agriculture sector, Dr Afriyie Akoto said: “By the measure of annual growth performance, Ghana’s agriculture has been sluggish from 7.4 per cent in the year 2008 and 7.2 per cent in 2009. Agricultural growth slowed to 5.3 per cent in 2010 hitting 0.8 per cent in 2011. It then stayed down at 2.2 per cent in 2012 recovering somewhat to 5.7 per cent in 2013 and then 4.6 per cent in 2014”.

According to him, “The growth registered in the two years of 2013 and 2014 was in large part on account of unprecedented growth in forestry and logging activities. If logging activities are dramatically increasing without commensurating growth in reforestation, the obvious implication is that we are further degrading our forest cover and opening the country up for the invasion of savannah and Saharan condition.”

“The crop sector which engages most of the 4.5 million farmers in this country, recorded growth of only 3.6 per cent in 2014. The 2015 budget statement expected a 5.8 per cent growth. In the event, the recorded growth was not even half of it, it was only 2.4 per cent in 2015. … Over the last six years, since 2010, we have an average growth of 3.5 per cent per year. It is not even half of the Malleable Declaration of minimum target of 6 per cent per annum for all African countries. This declaration, Ghana is a major signatory to. And it is saying that the target for agricultural growth must be a minimum of 6 per cent and Ghana as I’ve demonstrated to you has done only 3.5 per cent.

“With a population growth rate of 2.7 per cent per annum, Ghanaian agriculture is growing at a net rate of only 0.8 per cent per annum. It accounts for the rapid urbanisation typified by the Kayayei phenomenon …so you see that the sector is not performing at all”.