Debates of 29 May 2008

Order! Order! Commu- nication from the President.

Correction of Votes and Proceedings for wednesday, 28th May, 2008. Pages 1, 2 ….13. [No correction was made.]

Majority Leader, the next item please. Normally, it would be No. 3.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform the House that the hon. Minister for Local Government, Rural Development and Environment is not in. In fact, he told us that he could not make it today and we agreed that his Deputy, hon. M.K. Jumah, would attend upon the House to answer these Questions. Unfortunately, we have

been told that the hon. Deputy Minister who has been in Cameroun, Yaoundé, could not catch a flight to Ghana.

So I wish to apologise to hon. Members who were going to pose these Questions and promise that we would make time and space early next week for the Questions to be asked and answered. I wish to apologise on behalf of the hon. Minister and his Deputy and crave your indulgence that the Questions would be reprogrammed for sometime next week.

I thank you for your indulgence.

Item 3 is therefore
deferred. Statements. we have one Statement from the hon. Member for Mion.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to make a Statement on Ghana's oil fund and the potential for local fertilizer production.
Mr. Speaker, after decades of explora- tion, it has now been confirmed that Ghana has struck oil in commercial quantities. Since the announcement, several seminars and workshops have been held on various subjects pertaining to the find. A lot of the discussions have been on the utilisation of revenue that will accrue from oil trade and how best to invest such revenue for the betterment of the Ghanaian economy and the entire citizenry.
Many suggestions have also been made on investment avenues that will contribute to sustainable growth of the economy. Most of these have been aimed at ensuring that the ‘black gold' does not become the ‘black curse' as a result of
mismanagement.
Mr. Speaker, in all these discussions, hardly has investment in agriculture been a major part even though agriculture has sustained the economy through thick and thin. Indeed, the Ghanaian economy has been rightly described as agriculture based as it contributes more than 40 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and engages more than 60 per cent of Ghanaians. Agriculture is particularly relevant to the rural economy and any action on the economy without investing in agriculture will continue to entrench poverty in the rural setting.
Mr. Speaker, oil revenues should service all sectors of the economy without losing the long-term policy objective of putting agriculture in the driving seat of Ghana's industrialization. Therefore, for the oil find to contribute meaningfully to Ghana's economic progress, agriculture must benefit in terms large investment of oil revenue in it.
Mr. Speaker, globally, there are good and not so good examples of the investment of oil revenues in agriculture. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was almost totally dependent on imports of agri- cultural products before it became a key oil exporter. Through systematic and well planned investment of oil revenues in an agricultural improvement programme through training, investment in research, infrastructure and production, its food import bill reduced considerably.
Mr. Speaker, Ghana must follow this pathway by ensuring a substantial investment of oil revenue in agriculture. One significant investment avenue of great importance to Ghana is in the production of mineral fertilizer.
This area of investment is being suggested because Africa's grain yields

on per unit area basis stands at 25 per cent of the global average and the main reason for this is low soil fertility. Indeed, African soils are currently being mined to achieve the poor yields recorded because very little biomass is put back into the soil after harvest every cropping season. Simply put, we take more than we put back into the soil and this system of production does continue to be the bane of African agriculture.

Mr. Speaker, for Ghana's agriculture to make progress at the production level through increased crop yields, adequate fertilizer application must be part of our crop production efforts at the farm level.

Unfortunately, all fertilizer for our farming is imported and prices on the international market are escalating beyond the reach of most African farmers. Fertilizer price monitoring in the Baltic indicated an average price increase of between 5 and 10 per cent on a weekly basis. Annual fertilizer price increase between 2007 and 2008 was 50-200 per cent in the Corn Belt (USA).

Mr. Speaker, very much like other industries, globalisation has become the norm with the fertiliser industry and production or manufacture is moving to cheaper labour markets. This in tandem with Ghana's oil find lends a golden opportunity for Government to actively consider the establishment of a fertilizer manufacturing industry.

Numerous advantages will accrue from such an investment.

1) There are sea ports available to facilitate the easy running of such an industry.

2) Africa is currently the least fertiliser consuming continent and possesses the oldest soils which are crying for

nourishment. Hence, a very large African market for the fertilizer to be produced.

3) H.E. Mr. Kofi Annan's initiative of Alliance on Agricultural Revolution (AGRA) which f o c u s e s o n a g r i c u l t u r a l intensification will be boosted by such an industry.

4) There is opportunity for increased job creation for the active population and technology transfer.

5) The raw material will be available since natural gas is coming along with oil drilling.

Mr. Speaker, the Ghana National Petroleum Company's (GNPC) own productions of 60,000 barrels of crude oil per day in the first phase of commercial drilling will generate 80 million standard cubic feet of natural gas per day. The second phase of drilling is projected to produce 170 million standard cubic feet of gas per day and 340 million standard cubic feet per day by 2011.

These volumes of gas should generate a fertilizer industry in addition to its export to shore for power generation and ex- clued re-injection as part of the GNPC's plans for the gas produced with the oil drilling.

Mr. Speaker, the availability of natural gas in these volumes presents a golden opportunity for fertilizer production in Ghana. what remains are national resolve and political will to attract capital investment into the area, which experts currently put at about US$1 billion. Preliminary discussions could begin with our major fertilizer importers and their foreign partners on the subject. Similar moves have been made by the Nigeria Governent and the private sector.

Mr. Speaker, the chemistry of fertilizer production cannot be presented in this Statement. However, nitrogen in the form of urea and sulphate of ammonia and phosphorous fertilizers will be produced via a series of chemical reactions involving natural gas and atmospheric nitrogen and carbon dioxide. This basically is what the plant will be set up to do.

Nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizer are the most important fertilizers needed to boost cereal, legume and tree crop production in Ghana and currently being imported at high cost to farmers at the production level.

Mr. Speaker, centres of excellence to further advise technically on this are available at the International Fertilizer Development Centre (IFDC). The IFDC has headquarters in Alabama, USA with regional offices in Togo and Ghana.

I propose that a national consensus building process involving our agri- cultural research scientists, farmers, policy-makers and business community be reached to arrive at an attractive and practical programme of action to achieve this goal of fertilizer manufacture in Ghana.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity.

None

Ofoase/Ayirebi): I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute to the Statement on the floor and I would like to congratulate the hon. Member who made the Statement (Dr. Alhassan Yakubu) for bringing out this issue of investment in agriculture.

Mr. Speaker, when one does not

have money, investment plans and other interventions remain mere wishes.

Even when resources are limited, the Government may be forced to prioritise and spread scarce resources very thin. But as he rightly said, with the coming of oil money into the country, the Government would now be in a position to financially nourish areas that have seen neglect.

we do know that agriculture is one of the corner stones for GPRS II and that it is very obvious that without even mentioning it, when it comes to investment, it would be one of the prime areas that the Government would invest in. So in the first place, we can put the mind of everybody at ease, that even without discussing it, agriculture is one of the pillars of this Government. It is important to consult with all stakeholders on how to utilise this find properly and already we do know that this has begun in earnest.

Mr. Speaker, modernised agriculture is

very important and therefore investment from oil money would be very much welcome. He has talked a lot about soil and all those things, I am not an expert in soil science but we do believe that every investment in modernised agriculture would also involve research into soil, research into inputs and all kinds of things that would make agriculture a reality.

Of course, Ghana is an agricultural country and no matter the amount of money we get from oil, it would be very imperative on us to make sure that this money is re-channelled into agriculture. This is because in future, long after we are all gone, when the oil stops flowing, agriculture is what is going to sustain us. So this is an assurance to the hon. Member who made the Statement and to every-body that this Government, because modernised agriculture is one of its pillars, would invest in agriculture and make sure that oil money would go into re-sustaining agriculture, expanding it and making sure

that it is sustainable for all.

I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the

opportunity.

Alhaji Sumani Abukari (NDC -

Tamale North): Mr. Speaker, I would dare not go to the scientific analysis or comparisons of the brilliant Statement made by the hon. Member for Mion (Dr. Alhassan A. Yakubu).

Mr. Speaker, I know that the thrust of his Statement is that we should use our oil find and oil money to develop agriculture, particularly the manufacture of fertilizer.

Mr. Speaker, our food production and even our commercial crop production has gone down over the past years and this has been blamed on so many issues that one cannot mention here. But I think basically it is because we do not have the finances to support agriculture financially the way we would have loved to. So we have allowed the world Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to dictate to us on our financial policies or our agricultural financial policies.

Mr. Speaker, I think that until and unless we develop the will to challenge some of these policies that are forced down our throats by the IMF and the world Bank, we are going to suffer more and more and depend more and more on the western world for our food.

Mr. Speaker, let me go back a few years along the memory lane. During the period of the late Colonel I. K. Acheampong, we produced so much rice that we exported some of them. we produced so much maize in this country and we exported some of them. In fact, we became the food basket of west Africa. Mr. Speaker, we produced so much cotton that we made cotton lint here in Ghana, and not only fed our textiles factories but also exported a lot of our cotton lints. All

these, lands, know-how and technology are still available in Ghana.

Mr. Speaker, as I speak, Burkina Faso has overtaken us in cotton production but they bring their cotton down to wa to be gimpped for export. we have the technology and if a country that is so close to the desert can still produce so much cotton, why can we not? Mr. Speaker, it is because during the Acheampong regime agricultural tractors were subsidised, fertilizers were subsidised and all the inputs were subsidised by government.

Until we can go back to that system,

at least, for a long while to come, until we can do that, there is no way we can get back to the point where we produced enough for our consumption and even export. But the potential is there, why do we not tap it?

So Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. Member who made the Statement that now that we are going to get oil and make some money hopefully from it, now that he has shown us that some portions of it could be used to help manufacture fertilizer, in that light, I see it as a wonderful Statement that should wake us up from our slumber at least, towards the agricultural food production in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge that we

should not even wait for this oil money. I would urge that from now on, the Government should pluck up courage, disregard the world Bank and IMF and subsidise our fertilizers, our tractors, it is very important. That is the only way we can feed ourselves and go back to the status we occupied during the past Acheampong regime.

the United States of America (USA) Britain, Germany and all other countries subsidise agricultural production; they
do that, so why should they come to tell us here, who are poorer not to subsidize our farmers? Mr. Speaker, I would say that I benefited a lot from those subsidies. Through those subsidies those days, in the late 1970s, I was even able to build my own house.
Mr. Speaker, today, how many young
people up there can build their own houses? The kayayei and those problems we have today were not there, because the girls were meaningfully and gainfully employed in many farms around the North. In fact, a lot of our Southern brothers moved completely to the North to settle and I would say that it did not only increase our income, it also encouraged national integration.
Mr. Speaker, with these few words, I
would support the hon. Member for Mion for that brilliant Statement and I urge the Government to take a second look at our agricultural production and at the support and subsidy of all agricultural equipment, be it fertilizers, seeds and the like.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to associate myself with this Statement made by my hon. Colleague and by doing so, I wish to commend him for this wonderful piece.
Mr. Speaker, now, it is very clear that the oil that has been found in Ghana is going to bring a lot of blessings to the Ghanaian citizenry.
Mr. Speaker, we all know that agriculture is very important to the economy of Ghana and as it has been already said by the hon. Member who made the Statement, a lot of the Ghanaian working population are employed by the agricultural sector and it is also contributing a lot to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of this country.

Mr. Speaker, investment in agriculture is so much important; to the extent that, anything that we want to do to make the Ghanaian economy better off, as we are speaking now, depend on agriculture. And the fact that we are not having adequate investment capital to invest in agriculture is bringing us back in terms of our development effort because we are not doing a lot to promote agriculture.

Mr. Speaker, there is one critical issue in terms of agriculture and that is the research-extension-farmer linkage. Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of research done in the country in terms of agriculture but for the research results to get to the farmer is the problem that we are confronted with in the country at the moment.

So Mr. Speaker, I would also like to suggest that we should put so much investment in the research-extension- farmer linkage so that whatever has been researched, would get down to the ordinary farmer at the local level. I hope this is going to help a lot because the average farmer needs education so that he can do many good things in his farm.

Mr. Speaker, there is another issue

which I want to bring to the attention of this august House. Post-harvest losses are also another crucial area in our agricultural programme. Mr. Speaker, we need to invest much in the preservation of our agricultural produce because when a lot is produced, where do we store, where do we manage these products that we produce?

So Mr. Speaker, if we are talking about investment in agriculture, there is this particular area of post-harvest losses. It is very crucial and we need to put a lot of resources in that particular area so that when we have bumper harvest, we would be able to store some for the lean season

so that we can have food security in the country.

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to raise

another important issue, that is credit to farmers. Mr. Speaker, the available credit facilities to farmers at the moment are all short-term credits which are not helping our farmers. This is so because a farmer takes a loan today and he is expected to pay the loan by a year's time, which the farmer cannot do and this is preventing most of the financial institutions to grant farmers adequate financial support.

If we are also talking about investment in agriculture, we should make available funds for long-term credit facilities to our farmers so that they can work well with it and will be able to repay the loans for the agricultural sector to see much more improvement.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity.

Mr.
Speaker, I rise to support the Statement made by the hon. Member for Mion (Mr. A.Y. Alhassan). For me, it is a very important Statement and very timely. I am saying so because it seems most Ghanaians are excited, thinking that the mere discovery of oil will solve all our problems and we have already started forgetting about agriculture. As somebody from the Jomoro area, where most of the oil find is -- and Mr. Speaker, already our people have started suffering. Fishing is part of agriculture, and fishermen are being limited to the extent to which they can operate. Because the rig is just 55 kilometres off our shore, all the fish tend to congregate around it because of the light.
The fishermen are tempted to go near the rig to make a good catch because all

the fish are congregating around it. They are being prevented from doing so and nobody is suggesting an alternative for them. They go to sea and come with very little catch and in the next day you would read in the newspapers, “Fishermen are disturbing the Rig; Fishermen should not go near the Rig”. where should they go to catch fish? So the idea of beginning to think about agriculture is very important.

Secondly, two concessions have already

been given on land, one at Bokakokole and the other near the Domonli River. The farmers in the area have been told even not to drink the water. we have known since the 1930s that oil flows on that piece of land, now maybe it is viable to do it. what alternatives are we thinking for the people who have been tilling the land around that place? Nobody has made any mention of anything like that.

I often hear Presidential candidates going round and saying how they are going to use the oil money to develop certain regions without even mentioning what can be done for the region and the people who live in the communities where the finds have been made, and on whose land the finds have been made.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that we must think ahead, we must think in the future. we should not get over-excited. People are pumping 1.2 million barrels a day and their problems have deepened. we will be doing some 60,000 barrels per day and maximum in about 5 years would be 200,000 barrels. Of course, we would be able to satisfy local demands to some extent but we should not think that this is going to solve our problems to the extent that we will neglect farming; because farming is going to be our core occupation for years to come.

So, I wish to thank the hon. Member for Mion (Dr. Yakubu Alhassan) for making the Statement and I will also want to seize this opportunity to call on the Minister responsible for environment that already

some rivers in my area are being polluted. You can see activities out of the drilling floating on the water. They have given us some money, one of the companies gave the Jomoro District Assembly some money last year and early part of this year to sink some boreholes as alternative water supply for the coastal villages but I do not think that is enough.

I will also call on the Minister that he should call the Town and Country Planning Department to go there and demarcate the land properly so that those who are rushing to go there and buy land will not go and create new slums for the future. The rush is too much and we are being overwhelmed, so we want to call them to cool it a little bit and allow the Government to do the proper thing before they come.

with these few words, Mr. Speaker, I thank you.

Alhaji M. M. Mubarak (NDC -

Asawase): Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the Statement made by the Ranking Member for agriculture.

Mr. Speaker, in contributing to the Statement, I would want to emphasize on some concern about the abuse and pollution of fertilizers. Mr. Speaker, if you consider the Statement made, as he rightly said, our soils are virtually the oldest in the world due to lack of fertilizer application, meaning that we do not put in much as against what we take and currently you would see that it has stretched to a limit that virtually about 2 per cent to 5 per cent is really plucked back. And we are at a critical stage that if we are not careful, very soon our soils will find it very difficult to sustain agricultural production in Africa.

Mr. Speaker, if you look at Ghana in particular, the application of fertilizers, because of the cost involved in buying the

fertilizers, farmers are applying between 10 to 20 per cent of recommended research rate that is needed to sustain our crop production, whether in cocoa, maize or other crops.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that the Statement made now is very relevant. and it is very important that we take this opportunity as a country, especially the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research. I am using this opportunity to create the awareness so that our farmers will begin to appreciate the essence of using fertilizers.

Mr. Speaker, they know, as of now, that it is when they apply fertilisers that their crop production goes up. But then the cost, as I said earlier, is what is pushing them away. we should take this opportunity now that we have found oil in our own country, to begin producing fertilizers at a much cheaper rate so that we do not just see the oil find as an opportunity only to drill oil and sell only the petroleum products without redirecting some of the industrial gas, like the Statement rightly mentioned, into the production of agriculture.

Therefore, I would want to urge that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should start educating people on the negative side of using mineral fertilisers to educate them on their application; so that we also do not find ourselves in a situation where because they are made cheaper, people will begin abusing the use of fertilizers.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to commend my hon. Colleague for making such a timely Statement, and I hope that government agencies will take this Statement very seriously so that we begin to take the right measures to reap the full benefit of our oil find.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for

the opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I also rise to associate myself with the Statement ably made by the hon. Member for Mion (Dr. A. Y. Alhassan) and to indicate that he has said a lot of things which are very important.
There is the fundamental issue that has always been glossed over when we talk about agricultural modernisation; and the hon. Member for Jomoro touched a little bit on it - the access to land issue. whenever we ask the youth to go to the land, do they have access to land? Do we have land use policy, which we need to deal with?
when we talk about agriculture, peri- urban agriculture is very important. All over the world peri-urban agriculture is very important. Because of reckless use of land, this is being whittled away. when one looks around Accra, all the places that we were getting quite a number of stock from within the area for peri-urban consumption, have all been encroached upon by real estate developers, even irrigated lands.
when one goes to all the places that Government has spent so much money to irrigate the lands, the lands have been taken over by real estate developers without the Town and Country Planning Department doing anything about it. The hon. Member for Tamale North (Alhaji Sumani Abukari) talked about irrigation as an issue. It is very important that we do some of the irrigation.
Also subsidising agriculture -- he made mention of what happened during the late Col. Acheampong's time. Col. Acheampong went all out under the “Operation Feed Yourself Programme”
and did a lot. But there is a little correction I want to bring in. The cotton gins were not established by Col. Acheampong. The Tamale one and the Tumu one were established by the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) and the Bolga one was during the National Democratic Congress (NDC) time when people thought that there was the need to do something about agriculture.
Mr. Speaker, I also agree with him that we must ignore the advice of the Bretton woods institutions. The way they are dabbling in our affairs is something we need to do something about. whilst they are subsidising their agriculture, they do not want us to do anything about ours. And I recommend that when all hon. Members of Parliament come across Joseph Stiglitz's book (Globalisation and Its Discontents) -- Here is someone who has worked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the world Bank and also he was the Chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economists. His analysis of the situation is something that we need to imbibe as far as our part of the world is concerned.
I also want to talk about this oil find. we are being overenthusiastic about this oil find and some of our flagbearers have already started making promises as the hon. Member who just spoke said. we need at least, four years. That is when we will start anything at all when the term of whoever wins will be ending. So if one makes promises today, how are they going to execute those policies based on oil?
we have so much that we need to do something about. we have had gold in this country. Let us go to the areas where gold is mined and see the lifestyles of the people who live around those places. we have had bauxite and what-have-you. what we need to do, Mr. Speaker, is to take the advice of the hon. Member for Mion (Dr. A.Y. Alhassan) and take our

agriculture seriously and once that is done we will be getting somewhere.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to associate myself with the Statement on the floor and to say that in this country the biggest problem that we have is with imple- mentation. we do not expect the Govern- ment alone; we do not expect the Minister alone to fully implement the policies.
Mr. Speaker, the work of an agricultural officer, the expert, and the soil scientist is in the field but not in the offices. Most of our agricultural experts spend almost all the time in their offices researching and researching and piling their reports up without any sources. Two years ago, the hon. Member for Food and Agriculture said they would send all their agricultural experts to the field to help the farmers. As at now, we are not seeing that. The work of a doctor is in the consulting room and the theatre. The work of a teacher is in the classroom. So the agricultural experts in this country need to wake up. They are not helping to improve upon agriculture at all in this country.
Mr. Speaker, timing is also another big problem in this country. This month, farming season has started in the northern sector of the country. They have started ploughing. But when you go there, they are lacking a lot of things. The resources and the assistance to farmers in the northern sector or other parts of the country will get there when the farming season is almost about over. How do we then improve upon agriculture? we really need to take timing very seriously.
which part of the country is starting its farming season at which time and what

resources should we channel there? we need to have a critical look at all these things. If we do not do that then we shall be talking about agriculture, agriculture, and we will not see any improvement.

I wish to really congratulate the hon. Member for Mion (Dr. A. Y. Alhassan) for his Statement.

Mr. Joseph B. Aidoo (NPP - Amenfi

East): Mr. Speaker, I also rise to associate myself with the Statement on the floor.

Mr. Speaker, the production of fertilizers as we know, is part of the petro-chemical industry and therefore it is very refreshing that the hon. Member is reminding us that once we have found oil, when it comes to production, certainly, we would be producing fertilizers.

My main concern is about the use and misuse of fertilizers in our country. As we all know, and in very practical terms, we have crop extension in this country, we have animal extension in this country. But from what I know, we do not have soil extension in the field and therefore, farmers are tempted to apply fertilizers anyhow.

Mr. Speaker, this does not have consequences on only production of crops; but it also has serious implications on the soils and on the environment and on that score, I wish to call on the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, as well as the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment, to look at that area because it is very important. we have some areas where farmers are cultivating on marginal lands; they are cultivating certain crops which they should not have, all because we lack the extension and the education to farmers as to the right types of crops they have to cultivate in those areas.

Mr. Speaker, it is time that we looked at some of these areas particularly with soils and how they can affect our productivity now that we are facing all manner of problems. Currently, we have the food crisis. Mr. Speaker, I believe if our policies are put right and the programmes are appropriate, we would be able to produce enough for this country.

On that note, I want to also add my voice in commending our hon. good Friend in bringing this Statement to the floor.

At the Commencement of Public Business - item 5, Committee Sittings - Leadership?

Mr. Speaker, in view of the various committee sittings, especially the Appointments Committee meeting, I beg to move, that this House do now adjourn till tomorrow at 10.00 o'clock in the forenoon.

Mr. Speaker, whilst

Are you seconding the
motion or you want to - ?

I am seconding the

motion. [Laughter] - Mr. Speaker, I beg to second the motion.

Question put and motion agreed to.