View PDF Version - RePub

I
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION 10 THE PROBLEMATIC:
GHANAIAN PEASANTS AND THE
STAGNATION OF AGRICULTURE
On the very day of writing these words, the FAO has given the alarm on the
food situation in Africa: in East and South as well as in West Africa serious
food shortages threaten or already prevail. In Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda
and Mozambique people are dying from starvation; only immediate steps
can prevent famine from breaking out in another 24 countries (De
Waarheid, 10.3.1981). It is not merely that all these countries are faced with
a deficit of almost one mIllion tons of grain - for the current year their
needs are estimated at 2.7 million tons of which so far 1.8 million tons have
been promised - but also that they are unable to pay for any more imports.
The rising food imports - in 1981 as much as 43 percent higher than
in 1980 -leave no doubt about the bitter truth: that Africa is now unable
to feed itself and that, accordingly, all the declarations and exhortations
of governments as well as the endless confering of bureaucrats and the
voluminous writings of experts on the consequence and urgency of
agricultural development, have come to nothing. We must conclude to
outright failure in the light of the set objectives for agricultural policy,
objectives which, with minor variations from one country to another, state
that
agriculture should produce enough food to feed the people at
reasonable prices as well as progressively meet their basic nutritional
requirements,
while at the same time
agricultural productivity should be raised sharply both to release
and generate resources for industrial development. (Five-Year
Development Plan 1975-1980 Ghana, Part 11,1977: 2)
This failure to develop agriculture is a global one: none of the major
underdeveloped regions of the world have reported an acceleration of
growth in agricultural output or, in particular, of food production.'
During the past decades, however, a clear acceleration in wheat production