The Akufo-Addo administration\u2019s Planting for Food and Jobs (PF&J) initiative is a good idea but poorly implemented, Deputy Director of International Affairs of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Mr Fred Agbenyo has said.<\/strong><\/p>\nIn his view, the programme was put in place at a time farmers do not have market readily available for their produce.<\/p>\n
The produce, he said, end up going waste because there are no storage facilities.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the New Day show on TV3 Friday October 8, he said \u201cwhen it comes to agriculture and especially this programme, Planting for Foods and Jobs, it is a brilliant concept but I have a major problem with the implementation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf, for instance, I am planting plantain or banana crop it take some two years, I have produced plantain but I don\u2019t have market for it, to even carry the plantain from the farm to the market centre is a problem, I don\u2019t have storage faculties. So at a particular season you have so much planting on the market but nobody is buying it, it is going bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recently the\u00a0Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, said the government\u2019s flagship programme in the agric sector, the PF&J is doing well.<\/p>\n
In his view, the initiative has prevented food shortage from happening in Ghana.<\/p>\n
Speaking in an interview with Johnnie Hughes on TV3\u2019s New Day show, Thursday August 11, he said \u201cpeople wrongfully say there is food shortage, there is no food shortage in Ghana.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at all the sectors , the agric sector stands out as the sector which is doing well.<\/p>\n
The sector, he said, grew by 4.9 per cent in 2019 to 8.1per cent in 2021.<\/p>\n
The \u201cPlanting for Food and Jobs\u00a0is a good success,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n
His\u00a0comments\u00a0come at a time an Economist and CEO of Progeny Ventures, Dr Kofi Amoah said the PF&J was not working.<\/p>\n
This, according to him, is perhaps due to the incompetence of those appointed to manage the programme.<\/p>\n
Dr Amoah who was speaking in an interview on the Business Focus with Paa kwesi Asare on TV3 Monday August 8, said \u201cWhen I hear a President vouching for a programme like\u00a0Planting for Food and Jobs\u00a0I am elated because all the things we\u2019ve been talking about that we need to put the resources given to us by God to productive use but later realize its not working because probably the people appointed to manage it are not competent\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the pwalugu tomato factory which was to support tomato farmers has been rundown by incompetent people. According to him if the right people are not appointed to manage affairs things will continue to go bad.<\/p>\n
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READ ALSO:<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0Goil board chairman ignores Akufo-Addo\u2019s appointment<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\u201cYou can espouse all the \u00a0beautiful theories and programs that sound good on paper but if you don\u2019t have the right people with the expertise, competence, honesty to focus their attention and minds to what you want to achieve nothing works\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Afric Minister earlier said citizens of some neighbouring West African (W\/A) countries are trooping to Ghana to buy foods due to the success of the\u00a0PF&J initiative,<\/p>\n
Dr Afrityie Akoto said this\u00a0<\/strong>on the\u00a0Ghana Tonight\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>show on TV3, Tuesday August 2.<\/p>\nHe stated that whereas others are going hungry in their home countries due to food shortage, Ghanaians and other residents in Ghana are not experiencing same due to the abundance of foods as a result of the PF&J.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout\u00a0Planting for Food and Jobs\u00a0we\u2019ll be going as hungry as our neighbours around West Africa who are now coming to Ghana as the bread basket to pick our surpluses to the point that we even had to limit it by saying we are temporary banning export of our produce to the neighbouring countries,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course other west African countries are going hungry that\u2019s why they\u2019re coming to Ghana to pick our food. Our surpluses and you\u2019ll just have to travel to Ejura and other places to see those days the number plates of trucks crisscrossing Ghana, picking up surpluses to feed their own countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as Kano in Nigeria, they were coming here to buy our rice,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n
Planting for Food and Jobs\u00a0 was flagship agricultural Campaign of the Akufo-Addo-led government, with five (5) implementation modules.<\/p>\n
The first module PFJ (Crops) aims to promote food security and immediate availability of selected food crops on the market and also provide jobs.<\/p>\n
This module was officially launched by\u00a0President Nana Addo Dankwa\u00a0Akufo Addo at Goaso on April 19, 2017 in the then Brong Ahafo Region.<\/p>\n
The five Modules are: \u2022Food Crops (PFJ) , Planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD), Greenhouse Technology Villages (3 Villages), Rearing for Food and Jobs ( RFJ), Agricultural Mechanization Services (AMSECs).<\/h4>\n
By Laud Nartey|3news.com|Ghana<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Akufo-Addo administration\u2019s Planting for Food and Jobs (PF&J) initiative is a good idea but poorly implemented, Deputy Director of International Affairs of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Mr Fred Agbenyo has said. In his view, the programme was put in place at a time farmers do not have market readily available for their produce. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1218824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[27073,4834,1552,5279,4421,1427,976,16816,15402],"class_list":["post-1218823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-agbenyo","tag-brilliant","tag-food","tag-fred","tag-idea","tag-implemented","tag-jobs","tag-planting","tag-poorly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1218823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1218823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1218823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1218823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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