Eric Opoku is the Minister of Food and Agriculture
The government of Ghana, under the leadership of President John Dramani Mahama, is set to rehabilitate irrigation infrastructure across the country to boost food sufficiency, Eric Opoku, Minister for Food and Agriculture, has revealed.
Speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony to rehabilitate the Ashaiman Irrigation Scheme, Opoku stated that the government, in collaboration with its development partners, would rehabilitate the various irrigation infrastructure to enhance food production in the country.
He further noted that Ghana has over 1.9 million hectares of irrigable land, but just a little, about 226,000 hectares, is being utilised for irrigational purposes, stressing that the government, as a matter of urgency, would undertake a major rehabilitation exercise to revive defunct irrigation infrastructure and possibly build new ones to augment the existing infrastructure.
He indicated that 10 irrigation dams in the Northern Region would be rehabilitated and another eight would be built, saying that the Volta, Ahafo, and Ashanti Regions would not be left out under the irrigation rehabilitation project.
Opoku further stated that the move would enhance all year-round farming in the country and migrate farming from rain-fed status, adding that farmers would have value for their input and make themselves self-sufficient.
The minister added that about 250 solar-powered boreholes would be built to aid farmers who are into the production of vegetables, saying the youth and women in farming would be the beneficiaries.
“With farming, we can feed the entire country and even export to other places to create wealth for our people,” he added.
Dorng Hyun Lee, the Country Director of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), expressed the Korean Government’s readiness to support Ghana’s agriculture sector.
Lee further called for a collaborative approach in ensuring farmers were given the needed training and skills to increase yield and create job opportunities for the farmers through scientific and modern farming techniques.
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