Accra-based holding company, Class Media Group, has taken up a bold initiative to whip up public interest in self-support livelihood project through backyard farming and related forms of community based cropping not only to provide food on the table but also help families to make savings.
Dubbed ‘Operation Feed Yourself’, the campaign will involve series of educative programmes through its media platforms and support services with the collaboration of stakeholders.
According to the media conglomerate, owners of (Class FM, Accra FM, No.1 FM, Kumasi FM, Adehyee FM, Sunyani FM, Dagbon FM, Ho FM and Taadi FM) and one TV station (CTV), across the country, the long-term objective is to make Operation Feed Yourself, a household name to encourage Ghanaians to produce their own food to reduce over-dependence on foreign imports and by extension reduce the pressure on the cedi.
Ghana’s experiment towards food self-sufficiency was first initiated by the late military leader, Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong and his National Redemption Council (NRC).
Urban dwellers were drawn into backyard farming, and large-scale rice production in the northern regions increased substantially.
Through widespread sensitization in newspapers, radio and television, during the period, many including schools at all levels, from basic to tertiary begun mass production of food crops and animal husbandry with subsidized farm inputs, access to credit facilities and duty-free importation of agricultural machinery.
Class FM, according to management will lead the drive on the breakfast show with the hope of drawing in major stakeholders including government, farm based organizations, Agricultural institutions and donor partners to achieve the intended goals.
BRIG. (RTD) NUNOO MENSAH LEADS MODEL PROJECT
Former National Security Capo, Brigadier General (rtd) Nunoo-Mensah, a former Chief of Defence Staff, will lead the revived Class Media Group initiative, through a demonstration farm under its newly created agriculture unit.
The new business enterprise is into full-time large-scale crop farming and animal husbandry.
It intends to use its farm to inspire and demonstrate to Ghanaians, how a private organisation, through determination, can rally its own resources to produce enough food for self-sufficiency.
Speaking to the project ahead of the official launch, the retired outspoken military officer recounted how his father, a farmer, introduced him to farming at a very young age.
“so, when Ghana sits here and we are getting hungry today [and] we are asking people to come and feed us, [it baffles me]. Go to the supermarkets, 95 per cent of the foods there are all imported; it doesn’t make sense whatsoever”. – he explained.
Speaking on Class 91.3FM breakfast show with host Kofi Oppong Asamoah, he said in the wake of the economic hardship and the skyrocketing pricing regime, Ghanaians ought to adopt pragmatic stems to cut down cost to survive.
Gen. Nunoo-Mensah recalled that when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank “refused to give him [Acheampong] a loan”, he said: “No bloody fears; feed yourselves”.
“I had a backyard garden at Soul Clinic, Old Quarry Site …” he recounted.
He said when Gen. Acheampong came to power, “he planned this Operation Feed Yourself to start on January 13, 1972” and “by April, we were farming; I had a poultry farm”.
Contrasting Operation Feed Yourself to the current government’s Planting for Food and Jobs programme, Gen Nunoo-Mensah asked: “… Where’s the food?” adding: “In Acheampong’s time, from Weija all the way to Winneba, you see farms on your left and right”.
“We were serious”, he noted, indicating: “Acheampong himself had a farm within Burma Camp to prove that he was involved” but wondered:
“How many ministers have farms? How many of them go to the farm to farm? And we are hungry”.
“What we should do now”, in his view, “is to make agriculture key to our development because a hungry man is an angry man”.
“… What we should be doing is to launch this agricultural revolution [CMG’s Operation Feed Yourself]; not with guns but with tractors, fertilizers, cutlasses and everybody in this country should be involved”, he urged.
Gen. Nunoo-Mensah urged CMG to put together a blueprint for the initiative with the buy-in and participation of the government.
“So, let’s get a small team to sit down, and the government should be involved. We want to feed Ghana. We should start now. The rains are almost over, so, we can’t do much but there’s something we can do: there are water bodies which Acheampong built – the Weija Dam, the Akyerako Dam, Tono Dam, Via Dam, Dawhenya Dam. The Chinese are growing rice in Dawhenya Dam and Ghanaians are shouting on the road there, ‘trotro, trotro’; what a bunch of lazy people! If at 86, I’m working, young men are on the road shouting ‘trotro, trotro’ and the Chinese are growing rice; who should grow the rice for us to eat?” he wondered.
Gen. Nunoo-Mensah explained: “When I say everybody, I mean anybody who eats. Who should cook to feed you? Who should grow food for you to eat? If Ukraine doesn’t send wheat and you can’t get bread – look at the price of food today – you can make cassava bread; cassava grows anywhere”.
Gen. Nunoo-Mensah concluded;….“I know that Class FM is beginning a programme and I want to put my weight behind that programme and what we should be doing between now and the next raining season is to set up a small committee to plan this thing”.
“Planning is important and the government of the day should be involved because there are things that we cannot do by ourselves: we want to bring in tractors or whatever machinery; bring in fertilisers and seeds; the government must be involved and it should start now and if anybody in the government is listening to me today, I’m talking with the minister of national security, he should get involved. It’s not political. I’m not a political animal. I’m a military man to serve my country. We should plan now, prepare for the next major season; a small committee, which Class FM is putting together, I won’t be part of it … get the government involved, plan this thing properly and then come the next rainy season, April next year, we are ready for it,” he advised.
In his view, self-sufficiency would win Ghana off its dependence on the IMF and World Bank.
“If we are going to wait for the IMF, to come and do what? IMF doesn’t grow cassava, there’s a water body in the Keta Lagoon, sitting down there, can’t we have two million tilapia fingerlings and make feed out of cassava and soybean and feed them? Who says we can’t do it? Of course, it can be done”, he stressed