Mr Edward Kareweh, General Secretary of the General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU), has stated that the country needs effective structural policies to optimize the competitiveness of the agricultural value chain.
According to the General Secretary, enhancing the competitiveness of the agricultural value chains demand improvement in productivity along the specific value chains for an effective and efficient input supply system.
Mr Kareweh was speaking on the theme: “Ghana’s Agricultural Value Chain,” in a seminar organized to provide a platform for both state and non-state organisations to address national issues to enhance development.
Mr Kareweh explained that formulating the right policies and allowing it to be championed by competent leaders would improve crop productivity and product quality along the agricultural value chains.
Mr Kareweh stated that there is a need for the government to create an enabling environment to help facilitate linkages between core value chain actors and support services, including financial services, technical advisers, and mechanisation services to producers.
“Things are not done properly. Incompetent application of laudable policies had created a problem where food is cheap at the farm but expensive on the side of the final consumer. There is food in Ghana but locked up at the farm gate, things are not well.”
Mr Edward Kareweh
According to the GAWU General Secretary, poorly formed relations along most value chains in the country were fostering a high degree of predatory behaviour between actors, affecting the sector negatively. He noted that this predatory worsens and weakens the reinforcing system that limits investments and decreases efficiency and resiliency, preventing competitiveness, which in the long run affects the incomes and willingness of the ordinary farmer to purchase inputs.
Mr Kareweh intimated that government policies must provide specific incentives to agricultural equipment dealers and users to help expand smallholders as key stakeholders.
“So we must not blow our own trumpets that we are working. Let those we are serving judge. We must not praise a project because of its beautiful features, we must rather do that after seeing results.”
Mr Edward Kareweh
Mr. Kareweh stated that the financial sector is weak and poorly structured to take on capacity-building investments needed to effectively support the agricultural sector in general, specifically the equipment sector, which was hindering the value chain from its massive potential.
Mr Edward Kareweh noted that wholesalers have limited interest in building branded retail channels, which passed through to the farmer making it less important as a leverage point for improving broader and more appropriate access for smallholders.
Mr. Kareweh added that there are larger retailers with multiple outlets that are keenly interested in expanding their distribution networks but were concerned by the risks and cost of setting up new stores.
The General Secretary of GAWU concluded by saying, “The importance of stakeholder engagement is to deliver and ensure that society plays an active watchdog role so that institutions perform.”
