Former President John Dramani Mahama who is in Munich, Germany, attending the 59th Munich Security Conference 2023, has said he made a mistake as President of Ghana in buying tractors for farmers.
He is the Chairperson of the Tana High-Level Forum on Security in Africa.
He explained that “I realised that some of the things that we ourselves [did, we ]made mistakes with [them]. We imported tractors and agricultural equipment, we gave them to farmers.”
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— John Dramani Mahama (@JDMahama) February 18, 2023
“The farmer does not need the tractor, he does not need the agricultural equipment, he needs the services of a tractor.
“So somebody who knows how to maintain that tractor must have a service centre, where he provides the services to the farmer.”
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“But we gave the tractors to the farmers, in a year or two the tractor had broken down because he [farmer] doesn’t know every six months you must change the engine oil, you must change the filters, you must grease the tractor, he [farmer] doesn’t know that. So we will approach it differently,” he said.
It is recalled that Mr Mahama earlier cautioned the Akufo-Addo administration in 2017 not to buy tractors for farmers in the country.
He explained that as part of efforts to boost agriculture, his administration bought tractors for farmers across the country but realized the equipment became dormant because the farmers couldn’t maintain them.
According to Mahama, most of the farmers that benefited from the tractors had no knowledge on how to keep the equipment running.
He said this while speaking at the African Development Bank meeting in India in 2017.
“In the twilight of my administration in November 2016 I introduced the concept of Farmer Service Centres. And this was based on the experience I had that farmers do not need the tractors and the planters, what they need is the service of those equipment.
“In the past, what we’ve done thinking we were modernizing and mechanizing agriculture and I think that was a shot in the dark, it was a mistake and I hope the new government learns from our mistake.”
He added “we found out that the farmers could not maintain the tractors. They don’t have knowledge on how to keep those tractors running and so in two or three years, brand new tractors we provided were all broken down and standing on stones.”
By Laud Nartey|3news.com|Ghana