Greater Accra Regional Director of Agriculture, Mr Delali Nutsukpo, has tasked numerous employable graduates with no jobs and scattered across the country to go into farming.
According to him, farming is not the preserve of people who did not go to school.
Mr Nutsukpo made call in an exclusive interview with Today at a capacity building workshop held in Accra for Agriculture Tutors from about 56 selected Senior High Schools (SHSs) in the Greater Accra Region.
He appealed to the youth, especially the unemployed graduates, to take advantage of the government’s Planting for Food and Jobs policy.
According to him, the policy presents enormous opportunities for every youth, asserting that “agriculture will continue to play a vital role in our national development, into the future.”
The Greater Accra regional director of agriculture maintained that “the prospect of agriculture as a subject in Ghanaian schools is brighter now than before, but to achieve this, the face of agriculture had to change to respond to global trends.”
He was of the view that Ghana needs more educated farmers, and “to get educated farmers required a change in teaching of Agriculture Science in our schools to producing practitioners instead of just Agricultural Scientists.”
On her part, Greater Accra Regional Coordinator of Science, Technology, Mathematics, Innovation and Education (STMIE), Mrs Berthy Buah, explained that the one-day capacity building workshop was aimed at building the capacity of agric science tutors to make teaching and learning of agric science attractive as well as to also help them know the various policies that are related to agriculture in general in the country, so that they can benefit from the policy.
She, therefore, charged the participants to focus more on the practical aspect of the subject and combine it with the theory or the classroom work in teaching students.
According to Mr Buah, her outfit did not want their teachers to see agriculture course like other teaching subjects, adding that “If it happens so, it becomes something like a theoretical activity, but when they see it as something that can benefit them financially; they will teach and practice it too.”
“We want teachers to go beyond teaching the students but also to enlighten them on the many government policies, interventions and incentives put out by government to attract the youth into the sector,” he said.
Story: Franklin ASARE-DONKOH
Writer’s email: franklin.asare-donkor@todaygh.com
