Investing For Food And Jobs (IFJ): An Agenda For Transforming Ghana’s Agriculture (2018-2021).

The Investing for Food and Jobs (IFJ): An Agenda for Transforming Ghana’s Agriculture (2018-2021) has been developed to operationalise the vision of the Government of Ghana as indicated in the Medium-Term National Development Policy Framework (MTNDPF) which is titled “Agenda for Jobs: Creating Prosperity and Equal Opportunity for All (2018-2021)”. It also domesticates international development frameworks such as the SDGs at the global level; CAADP-Malabo declaration at the continental level; and the ECOWAP at the regional level. The IFJ is a second generation National Agriculture Investment Plans (NAIPs) and is designed to address the challenges identified with the first generation of the NAIPs Medium Term Agricultural Sector Investment Plans (METASIP I & II). The IFJ is developed to provide structured public investment and leverage private investments under three main categories: (i) developing critical infrastructure to modernise the agri-food system; (ii) building both public and private sector systems to generate the enabling results and the outcome results respectively; and (iii) direct transfer to farmers, agri-food enterprises and other value chain actors.
The seven agricultural sector policy objectives are: 1) Promote a demand driven approach to agricultural development; 2) Ensure improved public investment: 3) Improve production efficiency and yield; 4) Improve post-harvest management; 5) Enhance the application of science, technology and innovation; 6) Promote agriculture as a viable business among the youth. 7) Promote livestock and poultry development for food and nutrition security and income generation.
The Plan employing a value chain approach to address the key agricultural sector development issues strengthens collaboration, coordination and commitment of all sector stakeholders.
To help eliminate hunger and food insecurity, the Policy main proposal is a nutrition sensitive agriculture program to promote nutrient rich foods. The main initiatives include: Implementing food fortification measures; Promoting measures to strengthen dietary diversity; Enhancing the production and consumption of improved livestock breeds. The Plan also focuses on promoting food quality measures such as: promoting food quality label, establishing quality assurance certification process in food production, processing and distribution, promoting sanitary and phytosanitary measures.
In order to make agriculture more productive and sustainable the Policy envisages many measures under the Programme 2 “Crops and Livestock Development” and Programme 4 “ Sustainable Management of Land and Environment”. Programme 2 seeks to increase agricultural productivity through modernisation of the agricultural sector resulting in increased food and raw material production, improved incomes and jobs for the youth. As part of the strategies to achieve these, the government will motivate farmers to adopt certified seeds, fertilizers, improved livestock and poultry breed. Programme 4 seeks to facilitate the implementation of Sustainable Land and 55 Environmental Management (SLEM) practices in agriculture, this involves promoting SLEM technologies; creating awareness; and building institutional capacity.
The Plan also aims at addressing cross cutting issues such as rural poverty, by also underlines that gender is an important dimension of poverty. For instance the Plan promotes land banking along with secured land tenure.
To enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, and aggregation of smallholder farmers into upgraded value chains the Plan proposes interventions focused on technology dissemination and adoption, pest management education packages, farm mechanisation training and individual micro and small-scale irrigation schemes. Thee Plan also lists other programmes aimed at providing support to farmers through financial institutions that manage public resources for agricultural purposes, Subsidising interest rates to facilitate access to credit.
To increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters, main actions are directed to emergency readiness and emergency response. Emergency readiness include programmes of surveillance and prevention of plant and animal pest and diseases, early warning systems for natural disasters, Knowledge dissemination measures and training of farmers in disaster preparedness methods, Provision of subsidised disaster insurance products, Promotion of seed and grazing reserves, and storage facilities. Emergency response entail programmes for rapid response and control of plant and animal pest and diseases, rapid response and control of natural disasters, provision of ex-post/ante aid to compensate for natural disasters and disease epidemics, rehabilitation of affected areas.