The Managing Director of The Urban Jungle, Mr Selorm Agudu, has called for a concerted effort to develop and grow the agriculture sector in the country. He said that the agriculture sector must be lucrative, to make it attractive to the teeming unemployed youth in the country.
He insisted that agriculture remained the future of Ghana no matter the contribution of the other natural resources to the growth of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Hence the need to make the sector lucative.
“Gold is nice, oil is nice but the future of this country is in agriculture, because the cheapest natural resources we have is our land, and our water”, he said.
Mr Agudu said this in an interaction with the Ghana Talks Business on the sidelines of a seminar organised AP Oak Company, in Accra, on 12th February to showcase the business opportunities in the agriculture sector.
Growth
The Agriculture sector, according to the statistical service, expanded by 4.8 percent in 2018 compared to a growth rate of 6.1 percent in 2017.
Again, Its share of GDP declined from 21.1 percent in 2017 to 19.7 percent in 2018. Crops is the second largest activity in Ghana with a share of 14.5 percent of GDP.
This recent growth in the sector is largely attributed to some policies such as the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’(PFJ)’ and ‘Modernising Agriculture in Ghana (MAG)’ programmes, introduced by the current Government.
“Everybody eats”
In light of this, Mr Agudu believed that more can happen in the sector if the nation took advantage of the huge market potential for agricultural produce by making good use of its national resources.
“Everybody eats. The whole world is looking for national resources right now and we have them and we are sitting on them. The market is out there let’s go produce and feed the markets”, he added.
