Barima’s Beefs IX: Beyond a dry spell – the drought challenge to farming in Ghana

I was sitting at my desk somewhere in the provinces, combing through documents wearily as we corporate drones do, when a press conference playing on TV caught my attention. Lo and behold – the Minister of Agriculture, Bryan Acheampong, was speaking with a serious look on his face. His focus? Farming and drought.

The gist of it: there was apparently a “dry spell” that was threatening our food security and could plunge us into a hunger crisis. And our agric capo was not going to sit down and whine: he leapt into action.

A whole boatload of measures was announced: “a temporary ban on the export of grains with immediate effect”, cash transfers of GHC1,000 per hectare to cushion 928,528 farmers across the country, tapping in to the ECOWAS Grain Reserve to bring in “300,000 metric tonnes [MT] of maize, 150,000 MT of rice and 26,000 MT of poultry to feed the poultry industry”, among other moves.

Ready for lean times

It all sounded very important and impactful on the situation from my armchair and, of course, one has to wish the government the very best as it attempts to tackle this drought issue head on.

After all, who wants to go hungry? No one – especially none of us who have been raised in the abundance of rice, meat and grains generated in part by a liberal free-market system – would want to see that happen.

Can you imagine us thanking the Lord emphatically for getting the opportunity to eat banku and kenkey every day (if you were privileged enough) as our parents did in 1983? Blasphemy! And so, we wish the agric capo the very best and invoke God’s blessings on efforts by him and his team.

Yet it is important, especially for those of us who can afford literally to fill our bellies without a worry in the world (and who thus have far more freedom to think), to reflect on what brought us to this point. The most obvious answer is, of course, the darn rain.

Why, Almighty God, do you choose to “punish” us in this manner? What have we done to deserve this lack of showers, O Alpha and Omega? Shall we go the way of our grandfathers and pour tots of schnapps to soothe your anger and relieve the drought?

But then you remember: as far back as the time of Joseph in the Bible, the concept of storing grain for future contingencies has been known to mankind. Has the National Food Buffer Stock Company been capitalised and provided with all the support it needs over the years to fulfil its national food security obligations? Your guess is as good as mine.

Have there been pragmatic steps to solve the problem of lack of water for our long-suffering farmers and to fertilise their crops? Indeed, one remembers the promise of “One Village, One Dam” that President Akufo-Addo made to the Northern regions during his successful 2016 election campaign.

Flash forward a few years later, and a branch of the fourth estate in Kokomlemle, Accra conducted an investigation into the current state of 1V1D dams in the Upper East Region. The verdict from the Peasant Farmers’ Association of Ghana? “… farmers could not use the dams for any other purposes, except serving as source of drinking water for animals”. Ouch!

And so the drought persists and our food security suffers.

A wing and a prayer

Anyway, some observers have described our mode of governance as one that is permanently in crisis mode: always fighting one fire after the other, thus preventing administrators and officials from working on the structural problems that continue to hinder our progress as a developing nation with a population of 30 million-plus people.

After more than 30 years of practising uninterrupted democracy, however, can our leaders continue to use these excuses, seeing as they were elected to solve these very problems?

One does hope that this time, if we manage to scrape out of these pressing issues like we always do (if not without pain), our leaders manage to sit down and effect the necessary policies to minimise the possibility of such a drought crisis happening again. With climate change barging through the door uninvited across the globe, there has never been a more critical time to do the hard work.

M’ano asi. In the meantime, we keep praying for rain …

Barima Peprah-Agyemang was educated at Prempeh College and Ashesi University. He works in the rural banking industry

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