(A GNA Feature) By Ray Ankomah

Accra, Nov 23, GNA 96 The key players in the agricultural sector, which contributes about 40 per cent of the country's gross domestic product and engages more than 60 per cent of its workforce, will be the cynosure of all Ghanaians on December 1, this year, at the 22nd National Farmers Day to be held at Nkawie in the Ashanti Region.

This is an occasion our farmers, fishermen, agro-processors and researchers seek to wear the badge of pride, recognition, and honour for

their remarkable contributions to both the domestic and foreign markets. Ever since Ghana crept out of the searing droughts of 1982 and 1983 and made a dramatic recovery to register some 30 per cent growth in agricultural output, government has honoured its pledge to reward our farmers and fishermen for the toil and drudgery they go through every year to feed this nation.

The celebration of the maiden 'Farmers Day' in 1985 at Osino in the Eastern Region, which kick-started this national honours day, amply testifies to the high esteem in which our farmers and fishermen were, and continue to be held by government.

For the recipients of the impending national awards, it is not easy to come this far, taking into account the daunting challenges such as old technology, erratic rains, insufficient capital, high cost of labour as well as lack of a dependable market and adequate preservation facilities for their produce they had to brave through.

The initial awards, which ranged from cutlasses, Wellington boots, and pre-set radio sets to bicycles did not certainly measure up to the expectation of our farmers at a time beauty queens collected saloon cars as their prizes.

But our farmers accepted these prizes with all humility and gratitude. The situation is now changing as the value of these awards has appreciated significantly. Our award winners can now go home with power tillers, tractors, pick-up vehicles or a three-bedroom house even though the low prizes still prevail at the regional and district levels.

Criteria for selecting the best farmer of the year

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) has clear guidelines for selecting award winners. For example, a farmer's activities are closely monitored and assessed by agricultural extension agents over the farming season.

Preliminary selections are then made at the district and regional levels using carefully designed guidelines, which cover diversified and integrated farming operations such as raising livestock and crops and using the crop residue to feed the livestock and the livestock waste to nourish the crops.

The farmer must also fall within a certain scale of operation such as small, medium or large and the size and number of enterprises, the acreage of crops, number of livestock and poultry, surface area of fish ponds, and the number of beehives. The yield realised from these are then used to classify the scale of operation.

To qualify for the National Best Farmer award, the farmer must possess considerable knowledge of husbandry practices such as fertiliser application, weed, pest and disease control and scientific animal production techniques.

Another criterion is the need for environmental awareness and relevant practices. Here, the farmer must be aware of the problems of the environment such as bushfires, soil erosion and water management practices and the measures to be taken to alleviate their harmful effects.

Other criteria centre on good record keeping that enable the farmer to properly evaluate the success or otherwise of his enterprise, whether or not he or she adopts new technologies, and his or her contribution towards the growth of the community in which he lives and works.

Criteria for Best Fisherman Award

Similarly, the criteria for selection as best fisherman must include knowledge of the fisheries laws, safety at sea, as well as conflict and conflict management, post-harvest activities, co-management, other income generating activities, and environmental awareness.

Selecting National and Regional Best Farmers

The practice is for field officers of the MOFA under the supervision of the Regional Director of Agriculture to select three best farmers in each region, taking into account the various criteria already mentioned above.

The names and locations of the farmers selected from each region are sent to MOFA for onward transmission to the Selection Committee, made up of representatives from the country's public universities, research institutions and MOFA, which then tours the regions and visits the farms from one region to another. A Regional Best Farmer is then selected for each region with two runners-up.

The National Best Farmer is selected from the Best Farmers of the ten regions, after a most rigorous and thorough screening exercise. A brief from MOFA to the Ghana News Agency explained that farmers contesting the various awards do not apply for any prizes but are duly selected on merit based on the criteria and the procedures described earlier.

Expected Impact of Celebration

The agricultural workforce is ageing and the energetic youth, who must succeed our gallant farmers, are migrating out of the farm sector for lack of interest. This year's celebration will therefore demonstrate the innovations government is pursuing to make farming attractive to the youth to stay on the land to improve productivity and incomes and reduce rural poverty.

The themes for the previous years' celebrations have touched on a number of challenges, issues and concerns such as the need for increased agricultural production for a better tomorrow, and sustained agricultural production.

They have focused on the need for efficient marketing system; food preservation; scientific farming; human resource development; sustainable food security; empowering the youth; effective marketing and agricultural production; to modernising agriculture to enhance rural development; and food safety and improved nutrition; to the current theme.

The MOFA has analysed the challenges and bottlenecks besetting the agricultural sector and accordingly stepped up its leadership and facilitating role towards modernising agriculture.

These include improvement of access to farm machinery, irrigation and agro-processing equipment, importation of tomato processing equipment and the local manufacture of rice threshing machines for the use by farming groups.

The themes picked by the Ministry determine to a large extent the direction in which the country's agriculture has been going over the years and border on the need to improve the country's basic agricultural infrastructure, especially the irrigation network, rural road network, storage and warehousing to ensure quality produce and enhanced shelf life.

Other areas that require serious attention are the need for better-organised Farmer-Based Organisations (FBOs), provision of easier access to inputs and finance, and diversification of the production base to promote value addition.

There is again the need to improve access to markets and make information readily available to farmers and other agricultural stakeholders to avoid harvest losses and ensure maximum productivity in any given cropping season.

This way, agriculture would be capable of supporting food and industrial raw material needs of the country on a sustainable basis and thereby contribute to employment generation and improved balance of payments.

The theme for this year's celebrations - 91The Youth Employment Programme: An Avenue for Sustaining Agricultural Development 96 is especially relevant as it promises to engender job creation and socio-economic stability.

As a prelude to the celebration of this year's National Farmers Day, President John Agyekum Kufuor on Tuesday, October 3, launched the National Youth Employment Programme.

For over four decades, he said unemployment and poverty had become endemic in our society, "a reflection of the generally stagnant state of the country's economy, with its ever present features of ever-rising levels of inflation, high cost of credit, out-dated plants, under-used factory capacity and broken-down infrastructure=94.

"Collectively, these conditions have all but crippled the private sector of the economy and minimised substantially its employment generation capacity." He, however, pointed out that government had been emboldened by some positive indicators such as 93a continued macro-economic stability, a relatively stable currency, and continued growth of the national reserve=94.

One major positive indicator of economic progress is Ghana's qualification for the Millennium Challenge Account, which Compact was signed in Washington, D.C., United States in August, this year. This is intended to inject an amount of half a billion dollars into the economy to modernise and transform the country's agriculture.

An added boost is the government's launch of other instruments like the venture capital fund and the micro-credit and Small Loans Scheme to make it possible to assist businesses countrywide.

The Youth Employment Programme (YEP) has been designed through the collaboration of several strategic ministries, departments and agencies to empower the youth through human capacity enhancement and creation of job opportunities in all the 138 districts of the country.

More importantly, the YEP provides opportunities in particularly the agricultural sector, where 74,870 youth are expected to be engaged. In the short to medium term, the YEP is expected to contribute towards the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals in improving food security, the environment, health and education. In the long term, however, it is deemed, to become a critical factor in the sustained accelerated growth of the economy.

From all indications, the YEP is poised to provide unlimited avenues and support for the youth to sustain the country's agricultural development, hence the move to improve basic agricultural infrastructure such as better organised farmer based organisations, easier access to inputs and finance.

The YEP has all it takes to empower the youth to take seriously to agriculture and make it possible for them to step forward for recognition in the next line-up of award winners.