Mr Festus Kwadwokpo, Capacity Building Coordinator at USAID Ghana, has urged stakeholders in the agriculture sector to engage government with evidence-based advocacy on ways to improve agriculture.

He said evidence-based advocacy would help make government provide the enabling environment for private sector involvement, such as liaising with traditional leaders to demarcate lands for farming or improve road and irrigation networks.

He was speaking at an agriculture policy education and sensitisation forum in the Shai-Osudoku District organised by USAID under its Feed the Future- Agriculture Policy Support Project (APSP) and in collaboration with the district coordinating council and the Department of Agriculture.

It was on the theme: “Strengthening mutual accountability in the agriculture policy process.”

The forum was aimed at educating participants and stakeholders in the agricultural sector, including farmers and farmer based organisations, civil society organisations, staff of the Ministry Food and Agriculture as well as members from the Shai-Osudoku District Assembly, to understand policies guiding the sector and to empower them to demand and or provide policies that would advance agriculture.

Mr Kwadzokpo noted that a large percentage of economic activities in the district comprising 99 per cent is agriculture based, adding that for any sector to thrive it require policies and programmes that would support the sector.

He said the Food and Agriculture sector development policy (FASDEP) II and its implementation plan; METASIP II.

Formulated in 2007, FASDEP II was informed by global level development agenda, including at least five of the United Nations’ millennium development goals.

The policy, he said, was aimed at modernising agriculture in the country and thus transforming the economy and ensuring food security, employment opportunities and reduced poverty, while emphasising sustainable use of resources and commercialisation of agricultural activities.

Its objectives are: to ensure food security and emergency preparedness increased growth in incomes, increased competitiveness and enhanced integration into markets, sustainable management of land and environment, application of science and technology in food and agriculture development and improved institutional coordination.

In order to properly implement this policy, the Medium Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan, (METASIP) II was put in place to implement the medium term (2011-2015) programmes of FASDEP II.

“The plan was developed to achieve a target agricultural GDP growth of at least six per cent annually, halving poverty by 2015 in consonance with MDG 1 and based on government expenditure allocation of at least 10 per cent within the Plan period (2011–2015),” he stated.

The METASIP is also in line with the ECOWAS Agriculture Policy and NEPAD´s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (ECOWAP/CAADP) which provides an integrated framework to support agricultural growth, rural development and food security in the African region.

Mr. Yakubu Iddrisu, Advocacy Policy Analyst with USAID Ghana said his outfit’s five-year FTF APSP was aimed at improving the security-enabling environment for private sector investment in agriculture.

It would undertake activities based on policy formulation and implementation, policy research and policy advocacy.

Mr Bernard Yingura, Deputy District Coordinating Director, who chaired the workshop, said the district is very rich in agricultural activities like crop farming, poultry farming, fish farming and cattle rearing.

Some participants said policies in the sector should be geared towards empowering peasants or small scale farmers to expand rather than encouraging commercial investors to take up farming.

They said there is disparity in the objectives of modernising agriculture while creating more jobs, explaining that the use of technology reduces the number of jobs in the sector.