GTLC seeks national dialogue on METASIP

The Ghana Trade and Livelihood Coalition (GTLC), a trade and agriculture advocacy, research and practice organisation, has advocated a national assessment dialogue on the implementation of Ghana’s Medium Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan (METASIP).

It said the assessment was necessary if the country is to make gains in the remaining two years of the execution of the plan. METASIP is a five-year investment plan for agriculture development with a vision of a modernised agriculture, transformed economy, food security, employment creation and poverty reduction.

The GTLC made the recommendation in its draft report dubbed the ‘2012 Agro-Policy Performance Barometer- who is implementing METASIP’, under its Policy Monitoring and Evaluation System on the impact of METASIP on productivity and incomes of tomato and rice farmers.

The study covered six communities in six regions with a focus on tomato farmers in Derma in the Tanoso North District of the Brong-Ahafo Region and Ada Kasseh in Ga Adangbe East District in Greater Accra Region, and Rice Farmers in Nyariga, Nakore, Jana among others.

Mr Ibrahim Akalbila, Coordinator of GTLC, said the report’s assessment focused on food security and emergency preparedness and increased growth in incomes, two of the six programmes listed in METASIP.

He said the GTLC was of the view that recent past agriculture policies such as FASDEP I and II had not been implemented to serve the purposes of small scale agriculture, and expressed the fear that the same trend was emerging in the implementation of METASIP.

“It’s early days yet to have credible trends in the data collected, and so the data and analysis should be seen as a snapshot of the performance of METASIP for the year 2012,” Akalbila said.

He said the 2012 report questioned the mandate of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) in providing farmers the assistance and innovations, as well as extension services they required to boost production.

“This we believe is not happening and, therefore, one of the reasons why the implementation of the METASIP may not be successful as desired,” adding that, the mission of MoFA remained a forlorn dream of most small scale farmers.

He called for the strengthening of extension service provision in the next two years, to increase yields of farmers while providing increased and better support to institutions such as Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC) to provide support to agriculture development.

There must also be a restructuring of the MoFA, to better coordinate, the collation of knowledge, technology, innovation and to better direct farmers through extension advice.

GTLC initiated a Policy Monitoring and Evaluation system in 2009 to collect data on agriculture to assess the implementation of the agriculture sector policies and its impacts on incomes and livelihoods of small scale farmers.