THE northern sector is to recapture its glory as the nation’s food basket with the inauguration of a 17.3 million euro rice project dubbed “Rice Sector Support Project”(RSSP) in Tamale yesterday.
Among other objectives, The RSSP is aimed at developing lowland rice production in the Northern, Upper East and West regions, and northern parts of the Volta Region.
An estimated 2,500 farms representing 15,000 people are expected to benefit from the project that would equally help reduce the importation of rice in the country. It was financed by Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) and the Government of Ghana.
The Vice-President, who performed the inaugural ceremony, intimated that the government was determined to modernise agriculture through the importation of 2000 tractors from Brazil to support food production among other interventions.
He indicated that the perennial shortage of combine harvesters for rice farmers would soon be a thing of the past when the next batch of combine harvesters were delivered from Thailand before the close of the year.
“Government is determined to ensure that this country is able to meet its domestic food requirement from local production. To achieve this, we are determined to modernise agriculture with the view to increasing the scale of production and productivity by enhancing food security,” the Vice-President indicated.
He expressed regret that over $600 million was annually used to import rice, meat products and fish, among others, while the country had a comparative advantage in the production of major staples especially rice and maize.
Mr Mahama explained that the RSSP was one of the several strategies the government was embarking upon to revamp the production of local rice to meet the country’s domestic rice requirements.
“Rice is the second most important cereal crop next to maize in Ghana with a total annual consumption amounting to 500,000 metric tonnes. Over the last several years production fell to just about 10 per cent of national demand,” the Vice-President stated.
Mr Mahama announced that the government was instituting a programme to establish farm site boreholes to promote all-year-round farming activities in selected districts.
He noted that it was equally government strategy to rehabilitate irrigation projects and construct new ones.
“We call on the Agence Francaise de Developpement to allow us to integrate this programme into the government’s Block Farming programme; we intend to identify rice lands in the target districts and bring the farmers together,” he added.
The Vice-President entreated traditional rulers to collaborate with relevant institutions to ensure that agriculture was modernised while preserving natural resources for the benefit of future generations.
Touching on the hazards of bush fires, Mr Mahama appealed to farmers and Ministries, Departments and Agencies to educate the public on the hazards of bush fires in order not to threaten rice fields.
The French Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Francis Hurtut, explained that 6,000 hectares of rice fields was expected to be developed by 2013 to help reinforce the national production of rice.
According to him, the Partnership Framework Agreement signed between Ghana and France focused on promoting agriculture with the objective of alleviating poverty by increasing and securing the incomes of the sector, by improving the productivity, quality and marketing of the products.
He noted that the first project funded by the AFD under the Lowland Rice Development Project in 1998, focussed on the development of rice production through the effective use of water harvesting and regulatory structures on lowland rice fields.
The Deputy Northern Regional Minister, Mr Moses Magbenba challenged the youth to seize the opportunity to take up farming as a business rather than the continuous search for the otherwise non-existent jobs in major cities and towns.
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