Agriculture in Ghana
[12] This development was facilitated by the traditional Ghanaian system of communal purchase of land, which gave individual farmers the security of planting a cocoa tree that would take several years until being ready to harvest.
[13] The first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah attempted to use agricultural wealth as a springboard for the country's overall economic development.
[14] Beginning with the drop in commodity prices in the late 1960s,[15] farmers were faced with fewer incentives to produce as well as with a general deterioration of necessary infrastructure and services.
[17] By 1983, when drought hit the region, food shortages were widespread, and export crop production reached an all-time low.
The government had directed capital toward repairing and improving the transportation and distribution infrastructure serving export crops.
[20][19] Except for specific development programs, however, the government had tried to allow the free market to promote higher producer prices and to increase efficiency.
In early 1991, the government announced that one goal of the Medium Term Agricultural Development Program 1991–2000 was to attain food self-sufficiency and security by the year 2000.
Clearly, agricultural sectors that could not produce foreign exchange earnings were assigned a lower priority under the ERP.
[25] As of 2017, Ghana is ranked number two for Cocoa exports behind Côte d'Ivoire bringing in a $1,914 per metric ton (2204.6 lbs.
This massive increase, in turn, will cause "supply and demand" issues for larger and smaller farmers sharing a 1.3-billion-dollar syndicated loan disbursed by the government for the 2017–2018 season.
[26] The success of Ghana in cocoa production has shaped the economy a great deal and has been able to provide livelihood to more than half a million farmers in the southern part of the country.
Northern Ghana has not been able to take full advantage of this food source, in every part of the country, because some of the land is not fertile, and a complex socioeconomic limitation such as many farm owners not being able to come together.
There are five groups of people that help get the Sweet potato to market, the Farmers, traders, commission agents the processors and final the consumers.
[29] The main industrial crops are oil palm, cotton, rubber, sugar cane, tobacco, and kenaf, the latter used in the production of fiber bags.
Ghana's dark-fired leaf probably grew too fast and required rich soil to compete effectively with rival crops, but the potential for flue-cured and Burley varieties is good.
[5] Cotton production expanded rapidly in the early and mid-1970s, reaching 24,000 tons in 1977, but it fell back to one-third of this figure in 1989.
The company expected that between 1991 and 1995, about 20,000 hectares of land would be put under cotton cultivation, enabling Ghana to produce 95 percent of the national requirement.
The collection and processing of shea nuts is a major source of livelihood particularly for rural women in the region and also a way to reduce poverty.
[5] Those were various reasons for the declined performance, including growing urbanization and a shift in consumer preference from starchy home-grown staples to rice and corn.
However, farmers also had to deal with shortages of production inputs, difficulties in transporting produce to market, and competition from imported foods that were underpriced because of the vastly overvalued Cedi.
[5] In August 1990, the government moved to liberalize the agricultural sector, announcing the end of minimum crop prices.
The government's medium-term plan, outlined in 1990, sought to raise average crop yields and to increase food security, with special attention to improved producer incentives and storage facilities.
[5] Livestock production was limited by the incidence of tsetse fly in Ghana's forested regions and by low grazing vegetation elsewhere and it was of major importance only in the relatively arid north and was not earmarked for special treatment.
[33] As of 2022[update] cowpea production has been declining for years and farming this crop has become increasingly unattractive due to pests and diseases.
[10] Forestry products play an important part both in the subsistence economy and the export trade of many countries in West Africa.
Several species of timber producing trees are exploited, the most popular being mahogany, wawa, sapele, odum (iroko).
GCAP, with a $62 million investment, has upgraded irrigation and drainage over 7,391 hectares, improving water management and integrating climate information into farming practices.
By building over 110 kilometers of access roads at the Kpong Irrigation Scheme (KIS), the project facilitated easier and more efficient transport of agricultural inputs and produce, thus supporting the economic viability of farming activities in the region.
