Farmers Decry Lack of Government Support

Last Friday, a cross section of Ghanaian farmers, matched through the principal streets of Accra and converged at the premises of the Ministry of Finance and Economic planning and held a minute silence in protest against the government's unwillingness to protect them against dumping of cheap goods on the market. In an enactment, akin to a tribute for a lost soul, the peasant farmers, numbering over two hundred, hung down their placards with hats off their heads and remained mute for a couple of minutes in front of the finance ministry and in the presence of the Ministry's Head of Communication, Mr. Kwaku Kwarteng, demonstrating how the death of agriculture symbolizes their own deaths.

With the backing of civil society activists and fair trade campaigners from the Ghana Trade and LivelihoodsCoalition, the farmers told the government through the finance ministry that they did not have anything more to say, save to mourn their plight in their presence. Chanting war songs, the farmers, mainly rice, cotton, tomato and poultry producers, said a month earlier they had presented a petition to the ministry in which they catalogued their demands. They therefore did not see the need repeating what they had told the government just weeks earlier. Their presence at the ministry on Friday was just to sing dirges. The farmers are bitter that the dumping of cheap goods, coupled with western hypocrisy and their own government's inaction have combined to kill their sources of livelihoods. As a result, their children have dropped out of school, wives, husbands and kinsmen have died in hospitals because they cannot pay fees.

Mr. Ibrahim Akalbila, the Coordinator of the Ghana Trade and Livelihoods Coalition (GTLC) re-echoed the theme of the farmers match: "Protective Policies; the Best Way to Reward farmers" and reminded the government that the Farmers Day is recognized and superficially celebrated in recognition of the contribution of farmers but the best reward to farmers would have been to protect them against the influx of cheap imports. "We are calling for a better reward system where every farmer in Ghana benefits. That is a system where policies and support mechanisms that benefit thousands of farmers and improve their livelihoods are passed and implemented. That, we think, would be a better way to recognize the contribution of Ghanaian farmers."

Mr. Kwarteng who received the farmers said the concern of farmers ought to be the concerns of all citizens because it is when farmers are able to feed themselves that every one is fed. He therefore promised the farmers that the government is critically examining their concerns. Precisely the same date in 2005, the farmers had told the government that they were not happy that the multilateral free trade arrangement had whittled the fortunes and source of livelihoods of many food crop farmers in the country, but the government is yet to resist the liberalization drive.

The farmers noted with regret, the results of trade injustice on the people of Ghana, particularly the closure of the Bolgatanga Rice Mill, the Pwalugu Tomato Factory, and the difficulties facing the Pusunamongo Cotton Ginnery, among others and had wanted civil society groups to team up with governments, to influence decisions at the Hong Kong round of trade talks in favour of peasant farmers. Though the Hong Kong trade talks have stalled and the Doha round, where development was promised has collapsed, these do not signal the end of the farmers struggle. At the backyard within ECOWAS, the European Union is spiritedly trying to smuggle EPAs, which will, all but kill indigenous business. "We will resist the powers, because it is a struggle to survive." And that is what Ghanaian peasant farmers have set for themselves as mission accomplishable, said one farmer.

Earlier in the week these sentiments were made at a durbar to mark the first farmers' week organized by the Ghana Trade and Livelihoods Coalition, (GTLC), which comprises over fifty non-governmental organisations, farmer groups and other civil society organisations nationwide. The maiden farmers' week at Okyereko in the Central Region was on the theme, "Protective Policies, The Best Way to Award the Farmer." The Chief of Okyereko, a rice producing area in the Central Region, Nana Ntsiful Ababio XI at a durbar appealed to government to help them get buyers for their produce to improve their lot. Currently, the Okyereko Farmers Cooperative, (OFC) has about thousand five hundred mini bags of locally produced rice and 750 maxi bags stacked at the town's rehabilitated irrigation plant waiting for buyers.

According to the Vice President of the OFC, Mr. Emmanuel Amoaku, the group hopes to install a mill by next month to enable it bag its produced rice. The farmers say their dream of engaging in vegetable farming were dashed when government failed to honour its 15% responsibility to develop the idle land in the area to cultivate vegetables, even though JICA was ready to support 85% of the project. The Director of Christian Aid, Mr. Daleep Mukarje described as unfair the worsening poverty situation in Ghana, where children are out of school, given the enormous resources the country has.

He noted that debt cancellation and aid can never take people out of poverty but only make them dependent. "Countries must be allowed to do what is right to take them out of poverty. They must be given the right to make choices but not forced to implement policies imposed by Breton woods institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank." Mr. Mukarje emphasized that Christian Aid's campaign for Trade Justice is necessary to make the developed world aware of the need to develop sound trade policies to eradicate poverty in third world countries and not aid. "We are asking the European Union and the rich countries of North America and elsewhere to look at their policies that do not enhance the lives of people."
The Ghana Trade and Livelihood Coalition hopes to make the farmers week celebration an annual affair that would precede the National Farmers Day.

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