Ghana s Food Insecurity Issues Jordian Berrey West Marshall High School

Transcription

1 Ghana s Food Insecurity Issues Jordian Berrey West Marshall High School Food insecurity is a problem, and has been a problem all around the world for many years, more or less since the world began. It is one of those things that most of the world has tried to find a way to stop or prevent it. It has not really been a problem in the United States so it is harder for us to really understand what all is going on around the world, but sometimes I think we need to take a step back and see what is really going in other countries. Food insecurity is so big of a problem there are people starving to death everyday because of it. There are so many different reasons as to why this is happening. Most of them are obvious, they don t have money, and there just simply isn t enough food for everyone. Then after taking a deeper look into it there are so many other reasons on top of it. In some countries it is the government, in other countries it is simply that their land rights are taken away by big developers. There are so many reasons that this whole planet has the food insecurity problems it is very difficult to know how to even being to look at the problems or being to try and think of ways to help this. When looking into what country to write about it was truly a hard decision. There are so many countries that are heard about all the time, whether it is online or in the news. Finally in narrowing my search down to Africa, this was truly the hardest part. There are such a high number of counties that have high food insecurity issues it was a real task. Then when I saw that president Obama had just went over to Ghana, Africa to speak to them about their food insecurity issues it seemed perfect. Ghana is a country that has quite a few farmers that raise their own food but it also has the city people that have to go to market to purchase their goods. It has some diversity but not to much. It is a struggling country and there are numerous reasons why. Ghana has many food insecurity problems and most of them come from the fact that they need to be able to secure their property that way they will always know that it is their land; this can be helped in many different ways. A typical Ghanaian farm or urban poor family is not what you would consider typical. In Ghana family is looked at as very important. Marriage is simply looked at as something that is supposed to happen (Ghana-family). More or less it is how everything is decided, whether is be reproduction wise or even economic or noneconomic roles. It is the basic beginning to everything in the Ghanaian lifestyle (Ghana-family). Voluntary marriage rarely happens in any African culture that is all decided for them (Ghana-family). By age twenty most Ghanaian women are married. (Ghana-family). Ghanaian women that are married are expected to have children and not just a couple children, childbearing is taken very seriously in Ghana and on average most families have around six children (Ghana-family). Once the children are old enough to attend school they start going for a six- year primary schooling (Ghana-Wikipedia). These begin at age six then after that they pass onto a three-year junior high system, then to a mandatory four-year high schooling system (Ghana-Wikipedia). Then those who completed it must take an exam to see if they can get into a university or tertiary program (Ghana-Wikipedia). Ghana is the highest leader in education in West Africa. Agriculture is the largest industry that has people in it as jobs in Ghana. More than half the population in Ghana has agriculturally based jobs. Some of the agricultural productions in Ghana are yams, grains, cocoa, oil palms, kola nuts, and timber. At least those are the crops that basically form Ghanaian economy (Ghana-Agriculture). Agriculture is how these people live and it is what they do. They live off of what they grow and go from there. There are many stories like this one. A man by the name of Ayensu had a decent sized farm in Ghana, large enough to support his four

2 kids and his wife. Then one day he went to go to his farm and that is when he found out that the government had taken over his land so that they could mine the land under his farm. (Ghana-locals) Ayensu said that, that was the only way that he fed his family. Now his children are out of school and he can never go back to his farm again (Ghana-locals). Basically this is one of the major reasons that farmers in Ghana cannot find any ways to improve agriculture because more or less they have to strive just to make ends meet and keep their farm land. Here lays the problem, over eight percent of Ghanaian farmers are engaged in subsistence farming (SELF_SUPPORTED). Most farmers in Ghana have to deal with problems such as lack of labor to get the crops in, out, and take care of them. They also do not have access to good markets to sell their products in, and post harvest losses. However, their largest agricultural problem is simply that they cannot have the land that is needed to support their families and also to support those urban families that rely on the markets to get food to support their families. Also if the farm families are not even able to support their families there are no ways that they will take their food to the village markets and sell it. The main problem in Ghana is that there simply is not enough land and that the land that the farmers do have it seems that land is just taken out from underneath their feet when they aren t even expecting it (Ghana-locals). There are just so many major barriers on top of the Ghanaian people attempting to keep their land that they are basically struggling in every aspect. The fact that there are so many barriers in agriculture makes it very hard for families even to just go day to day and live. That is basically more or less the whole problem; these families cannot get through all those barriers and make it out on top. It has to be so hard for these people to go day to day without knowing whether or not their farm would still be considered theirs then they got back to it or whether someone would have stepped in and taken it from them and then they will no longer have a good source of living. As Ayensu said, he didn t even know what was going on and all the sudden the land was no longer his (Ghana-locals). This is by no means the only problem that they have. There are many other barriers that they have to get over, such as with child bearing being such a big aspect of their family lives the population is growing profusely. This means that they now need more food to support all the people. All around there are many barriers that they have to over come. This doesn t sound like it would be that be of a problem but presently there are so many farmers with so many different barriers to get over, it is hard for some of them to even survive in the agricultural industry. The rural and poor are at such a disadvantage that they have to work even harder to get where they need to be. They have to worry about all the normal stuff that all farmers have to worry about such as, how much money it will cost to put crops in or take them out; how much money they will get out of the crops, but in their case whether or not it will feed their families. This is all so much, then adds on all the other stress it s hard to even fathom what that would be like. They basically have a huge disadvantage because they have to worry about all the normal things in farming then add a large quantity of other disadvantages and problems and that is what they have to deal with. While looking through various different articles it is easy to realize that there are many different accounts of farmers going home to their farms and their farms being taken away from them. There are many different companies that have taken this land, but also the government has, on occasion stepped in and taken over some land. This has always been a problem for them when looking back in history, but this seems to be increasing. Nevertheless, it may have stayed the same but this has always been a big problem so it seems as though it could not get any worse.

3 If the agricultural productivity were able to be increase by a small scale this would really help out the country as a whole. Looking at the fact that so many people in this country are farmers, this would benefit not only all the farmers in Ghana, but also all citizens of Ghana. Agriculturally if they could simply have a more secure way to keep their land and know that no matter what no large companies, or even the government, would not step in and take over the land that they farm this would excessively help their agriculture industry. This would allow farmers to be more able to make a larger sum of money with more land and also allow them to put more money back into the land and plant better crops the following year. This would all around help the country of Ghana. Increasing all agricultural growth this would lead to the country as a whole doing better. If there were one way I would say that there would be a good way to change the food insecurity problems in Ghana that would be to first secure all farmers land. In Ghana it needs to be made so that the farmers can have their land be permanently to their name unless permission is given by the landowners for the land to be taken, if they no longer want it. So that there is no way that people can come in and take their land. That way the farmers will have a steady income and hopefully, more likely, be able to grow more and get more out of their land. Once they have a steady income they will then be able to put more money back in to the land and that will increase the crop productivity. In Ghana so many farmers that don t have the money that is needed to put into a good crop or there are some farmers that are basically scared that their land will not be there. Then they will have no land and no money to fall back on. Ghana, its self is by no means a wealthy country; one major way money can be put back in to the country is through agriculture. Also, through agriculture this lowers the prices for the food in markets that the urban poor buy, because then food doesn t have to be imported. By allowing all these people to have the land securely this would allow everyone in the country to live with a lot more economical security. There would be more money for all, which would help everyone in Ghana. There would be more money because that way there wouldn t have to be food imported because the farmers would be able to grow more and sell more produce so the money would circulate within the country making everyone get to have more money and become wealthier. That way the country would become all around better because it wouldn t be as much of a low class country and that would make them more self sufficient and all around better off. All the different organizations are such help all around the world. In Ghana, there are many ways that they could help all citizens there also. The large national organizations could step in and help by helping out the farmers to get started with but I think that there is a better help for them than that. I think that the help for the Ghanaian farmers needs to start with their government. First, the government needs to stop taking any of the land. Then government could set up laws against people and companies taking over the land of those farmers. Also, make it so that the land is in that farmers name that way there is a written document of the land being theirs. That way most of the problems would be solved there. Within the community farmers could help out each other by all working together to get everyone started, that way everyone could start out well. The only way large companies can help at all is if they were willing to donate some of the seed to farmers after the farmers got their own farmland. Also, if those companies keep the some of the land that they have already taken then they could not outsource it and leave it in the country that way everything could be circulated within the country. Another main way that they could help is plain and simple they just need to keep their companies out of the land that already belongs to the farmers, which way the farmers can have their land and everything will be okay and well. More or less everyone can help out the people of Ghana out in many ways.

4 After researching this country it is very hard to believe that there are countries that are this bad off. The problem is that food insecurity could be a very preventable problem through a few easy ways the problem is just getting those few easy ways accomplished. There are so many things that could be done to help this country and they all seem to be common sense but the problem is getting all these problems to be fixed it isn t just as simple as writing it down it is so much more complex. It takes time and is one of those things that will be really hard to change. The one problem that needs to be addressed is the fact that they need to secure the property rights of the farmers of Ghana. They need to get the large companies to help and stop causing problems and that will help all farmers. If they help the country out then the country will do much better all around.

5 Works Cited "Ghana - AGRICULTURE." Country Studies. Web. 20 Sept < "Ghana - Family Structure, Family Formation, And Family Life, Marriage, Family Formation, And Childbearing." Marriage and Family Encyclopedia. Web. 20 Sept < "Ghana -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 20 Sept < "Ghana: Locals learn to defend their rights against companies." Oxfam International. Web. 21 Sept < "SELF-SUPPORTED GHANAIAN SUBSISTENT FARMERS CONSORTIUMS Africa Rural Connect." What&#039;s your best idea for AFRICA? Africa Rural Connect. Web. 20 Sept <