Monday, October 17, 2016
Labadi Beach Hotel, Accra, Ghana
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Ghana Strategy Support Program (GSSP) is organizing a one-day policy dialogue to share policy recommendations emerging from selected research activities. This policy dialogue will bring together policymakers and development practitioners to offer actionable recommendations on some of the critical issues relevant for agricultural development in Ghana. The event will be organized in five panels that will provide ample opportunities for discussion. Each panel will include authors and relevant commentators from the private sector, government, and development partners. The panel discussion will begin with 5-minute presentations followed by comments by other panelists and a general discussion.
Participants: Representatives from the private sector, civil society, academia, development partners, and members of the Ministry of Agriculture.
Panel 1. Agricultural Intensification will look at whether farmers are moving towards greater intensification, increased application of labor and non-labor inputs to increase land productivity and what should be expected in terms of the adoption of some of the agricultural technologies, especially hybrid seeds, and recession agriculture as an opportunity for intensification beyond rain-fed agriculture.
Panel 2. Land, Labor, and Seeds will look at the diversity of the land tenure systems, its implications for investments and productivity, and women’s access to land, labor issues focusing on the youth, agriculture, and urbanization, as well as the seed sector development.
Panel 3. Supply of Services will examine whether the private sector can be expected to provide essential services and what role the state may need to play. This will be done with reference to mechanization, contract farming, cocoa sector development, and soil fertility management.
Panel 4. Macro Economy and Political Economy will examine how much fiscal space is left for agriculture, given the macro economic challenges that Ghana is going through. It will also examine the political economy of public spending, including Ghana’s commitments to CAADP, Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program, and the implications of decentralization for public service delivery at the local level.
Panel 5. Transformation of the Food System will examine the transformation of Ghana’s agri-food industry, the prospects for domestic agro-processing to compete with imports of processed food, and the changing diet of the Ghanaian population. The final session will offer some closing remarks.
GSSP is a research, capacity building, and communication program that works to promote evidence-based agricultural policy making. GSSP research focuses essentially on the strategic question of “how to” transform agriculture into a modernized sector. In the past 10 years, GSSP has been examining priority issues in the agricultural sector, including the supply of essential services, the competitiveness of the domestic agricultural sector, the land tenure systems and the productivity of the Ghanaian farmer, public expenditures and their effective utilization, markets and technological change, investments and service provision and welfare issues, among others, to gain insights into the role that state needs to play.