Agriculture remains undoubtedly a major factor in Ghana’s journey towards development.
Most of the developed countries we aspire to pay critical attention to agriculture.
Recent moves by the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Fiifi Kwettey to promote agriculture and to encourage the youth to venture into farming, therefore must be commended and supported.
But if this campaign is to be successful, there’s the need to seriously reconsider including Agriculture in the Basic school curriculum.
Bringing back Agriculture into the curriculum will enhance learners’ knowledge and practical skills in the discipline as well as whet their appetite for individual or collective agricultural projects which will further result in achieving food security in the country.
A major objective of Ghana’s school system, as designed by the Education Reform Programme of 1987, is to make education more relevant to the socio-economic realities of the country so that Ghanaian children will be able to live productive and meaningful lives.
To this end, Agricultural Science was made part of subjects studied at the JSS and schools were supplied with a variety of agricultural implements to enable students undertake Agriculture projects to have first-hand understanding of concepts.
Sadly, when the debate to for reduction of subjects studied at the JHS raged on, no one was able to put up a strong defense for the discipline and it had had to be subsumed into Integrated Science leaving little room for thorough work.
Students and pupils in basic schools across the country must be oriented towards agriculture to stop trooping to Accra to engage in environmentally destructive activities such as scrap collection which involves the breaking of old TV sets, refrigerators and other such gadgets with attendant environmental hazards.
I believe there are quite a number of people who would like to venture in this area but unfortunately, (it is mostly unfortunate) after school there are no funds for capital for starters like myself. Few freshmen may have inherited a portion of land from xyz but they still need a cash boost for resources – farm implements, labor ect.
She or he may want to start off as a labourer on someone else’s farm which is a good thing considering the experience one would acquire and the tremendous services they would offer as a quota of their contribution to the country’s development but the agonizing fact is that, it doesn’t pay so well. Young folks are running from the country sides to the cities because it doesn’t pay well.
I won’t dispute the fact that government is trying but I wish the steps will be doubled.