What is the future of agriculture in Ghana? And what are the implications for poverty reduction? IFPRI Senior Research Fellow James Thurlow addresses these questions in an essay published in the Gate's Foundation Goalkeepers Report. He writes that "if you asked most Ghanaians where the opportunities of the future lie, they would point to Accra, Kumasi, and other big cities. The country’s thousands of small farms symbolize the past—and they symbolize poverty. But this dichotomy misses an important point. Agriculture is not going away; it is transforming. Subsistence farming may be gradually disappearing (the number of Ghanaians who say farming is their primary job fell from 57 to 44 percent between 2006 and 2016), but it is being replaced by a more dynamic, productive, market-oriented agriculture."
Thurlow explains that this new type of agriculture generates jobs off the farm for entrepreneurs who sell farm equipment and supplies, trade and transport food, and process crops into valuable commodities (tomatoes into tomato sauce, for example). Read the whole essay to learn more about how this "agrifood system" can provide opportunities for millions of ambitious young people in the decades to come.