Developing Ghana's agriculture

Published in 1972

Ghana has abundant land and labor resource base that portends a high level agricultural production® Pursuant to its agricultural development policy involving utilization of the rich agricultural resource base, the country has since its attainment of political independence in 1957 embarked upon a considerable number of development programs® The major agricultural development projects include public investments in laying down infrastructural facilities for agricultural research and education® In recent years, the country has also embarked upon development planning in the use of the abundent traditional resources and scarce, purchased agricultural production capital inputs. The common objective in carrying out these development programs has been ostensibly to achieve sustained growth (by volume) of agricultural production. Apart from cocoa and tobacco, which are produced under organized conditions, all other agricultural production and output distribution are carried out in a maze of socioeconomic deficiencies, institutional and organizational imperfections and without motivations and incentives These factors together constitute restraints that inhibit the agricultural output growth and thus cause stagnation of the country’s agriculture.

The agricultural output-growth restraints affect the output indirectly by causing misallocation and utilization of the abundant traditional resources of land and labor; they also affect the output by limiting deployment of the existing infrastructural facilities for agricultural research and education and supply of the purchased inputs ? and hence the use of technologies in the agricultural production Agricultural development policy of Ghana therefore must essentially consist in overcoming these output growth restraints' that are largely exogenous to the agricultural production process

AZU_TD_BOX71_E9791_1972_465.pdf (6.4 MB)

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