2nd phase of Planting for Food and Jobs will create 210,000 jobs – Akufo-Addo

According to the President, the scheme will also engage over a million farmers across the country.

"The impact of the programme is expected to be in the area of job creation, with some 1.2 million farmers to be enrolled in the first year", the president said at the launch at the University of Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale, adding: "In the next four years, the programme is destined to record an annual average of two hundred and ten thousand (210,000) new farm-related jobs.

"This will exclude other jobs along the agricultural value chains estimated at an annual average of four hundred and twenty thousand over the same period", the president said. Targeted at building on the successes of the initial programme, the second phase of the programme is a five-year master plan for the transformation of agriculture in Ghana with focus on modernisation through the development of a selected commodity value chain and active private sector participation."

Mr Akufo-Addo added that the second phase, by design, "takes a holistic view and places greater emphasis on value chain approaches by focusing on strengthening linkages between actors along eleven selected agricultural commodity value chains broadly categorised into grains, roots and tuber, vegetables and poultry."

President Akufo-Addo launches PFJ Pulse Ghana

He added that phase two of the programme also seeks to improve service delivery to maximise impact, and substitutes direct input subsidy with smart agricultural financial support in the form of comprehensive input credit, with provision for in-kind payment.

The president disclosed further that key elements of the new phase also include an input credit system that provides farmers with access to inputs such as seeds, fertilisers and pesticides and other support services for improving productivity and yield as well as storage infrastructure and logistic hub to improve storage and distribution of produce to reduce post-harvest losses.

Additionally, it also includes off-taker arrangements/commodity trading to improve farmer access to markets which guarantees fair prices for crops; and a digitised platform for management, monitoring and coordination to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the programme.