The new government has a challenging inbox. The global agricultural economy has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. There have been immense achievements in increased production nationwide, with yields increasing, yet Ghana has become less competitive in that landscape, even in our cherished cocoa sector. And we have faced significant volatility with weather, commodity prices, and input prices, which have caused challenges up and down the sector, leading to the mass import of grains in the past few years.
When we can make our agricultural economy competitive with global producers, the sector will be the engine of growth it should be for the economy and the country. The yield gap can be closed. Productivity can drive profitability and reduce import dependence. We can re-establish Ghana at its rightful place as the centre of the global cocoa economy and as an agricultural powerhouse within the region and continent.
Increased production would lead to significant increases in agricultural processing, as the current main barrier of limited feedstock availability would disappear.
But if we fail to make the gains in agriculture, others will. The rest of the world is not static but is rather applying the lessons learnt over decades of agricultural improvement and the paradigm shifts that have occurred in the global agricultural landscape. Change happens, and the wave of technological innovation in the agricultural sector has created productivity gains that we need to adapt to in order to survive.
At the centre of all of this is yield intensification. There exists in Ghana a huge ‘yield gap’ representing the gulf between potential productivity and the day-to-day reality farmers face. At Demeter Ghana, we exist to close this yield gap.
Progress in agriculture is a two-sided coin, with material inputs on the one side (fertiliser, seeds, irrigation systems and the like) and better management practices on the other. Successful agricultural development will flow from the marriage of good practices to quality inputs. We must cater to both.
To celebrate the opportunities heralded by a new government with a fresh perspective on the sector, we have considered high-impact solutions that are affordable, which the esteemed ministry can consider to boost the competitiveness of the sector. We implore the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to join hands with industry leaders such as ourselves to achieve the potential of this vibrant and exciting sector in national life.
The utterly transformative items in our agricultural life would be significant capital infrastructure such as more machinery, more inputs, and more irrigation at scale. However, we have tried to think of high-impact but low-cost interventions that could transform the sector in a short time by quickly increasing yields and increasing productivity and profitability without bankrupting the government.
We believe the three simplest and highest-return ‘wins’ for the agricultural sector in Ghana are:
- Reduce nutrient leaching and increase nutrient use efficiency by widespread liming, funded by transferrable tax credits.
- Use technology to close the yield gap by putting an e-Xtension Officer in the pocket of every farmer, delivered locally.
- Focus on biological interventions like seed inoculation that generate a minimum 500% return on investment at scale
1. Increase Nutrient use efficiency by widespread liming.
The Problem:
Nutrient Use Efficiency (NUE) is a measure of how much of the nutrients supplied as fertilisers are taken up by the plant and turned into financial or grain yield.
It is a sad reality that the NUE of the Ghanaian farming sector is very low by global standards. This is in part because of the high levels of acidity found in the country, predominantly in the Southern and Western Zones of the country. It is particularly acute in the cocoa belt but is a national problem.
Soil acidity binds chemical elements into the soil, such that the efficiency of NPK applied in an acidic soil might be as low as 23%. An uptake of 23% means 77% of the cost is wasted. A soil with neutral pH (6-7) will allow 100% of the nutrients in the soil to be taken up and used by the plant to create a better yield.
Just take a look at the effect of soil pH on use efficiency:
The Solution:
The solution to this problem, used ubiquitously around the world, is the liming of soils. Many countries, for example, Ireland, have national campaigns to lime soils, and almost every country issues guidance on proper liming. Very few farmers in developed farming systems will apply fertiliser without first liming soils, because fertiliser application will simply be wasted without it.
Ghana has no national programme, which must be delivered efficiently.
We can and should immediately correct this by issuing a large-scale programme to deliver and treat affected soils. Treatment, in addition to provision, is important to ensure the job is done. The government could fund this programme through the use of transferable tax credits, which contractors could then discount for cash through the private or financial sector. The government would see a return on this investment within a year from significantly increased yields and a significant increase in return on investment in fertiliser.
The Impact:
A widespread national campaign to correct soil pH would significantly increase national productivity. Yield impacts could be – in the first year – up to 50%[1]. Fertiliser would achieve much greater yield results. We have already proven this in the cocoa sector, as independently verified.
Soil correction creates a healthy soil, which in turn creates a healthy plant. The healthier the plant, the higher the quality of the yield, and we have already seen that cocoa produced in neutral soil has lower levels of toxic minerals such as Cadmium.
Healthy plants are also less susceptible to pests and diseases, so we would see a reduction in pest and disease incidences on our crops. This would in turn reduce the requirement for expensive chemicals which hurt our budgets and sometimes our health. This particularly applies to the cocoa sector: a healthy cocoa plant will be more resistant to Swollen Shoot and Black pod.
2. Use technology to close the knowledge gap
The Problem
Just as the above demonstrates, the yield gap is very often the knowledge gap. Better, more educated farmers with greater access to information produce better crops, more efficiently. The more information we can give farmers in a manner that they understand, the more likely they are to increase their yields and create better, more profitable harvests. This is a phenomenon that has been widely recognised over the past decades of agricultural interventions and has led to the widespread hiring and use of extension officers.
In today’s world, the efficiency of extension officers can be significantly improved upon. To be effective, Extension officers must be persistent and responsive: responding to what they see or are told with tailor-made advice. Extension officers need to be able to communicate with farmers in their local languages.
The Solution
AI can create extension agents who are more efficient, more knowledgeable and more available than their human counterparts. They can understand images as well as text, and (when localised) communicate directly via speech with farmers in their local languages.
Every farmer who has a smartphone can have one of these agents in his or her pocket, who will be available 24/7 in line with the vision to achieve the 24 hour economy.
- Use AI to put a highly trained extension officer into the pocket of every farmer, available 24/7.
- Ensure these virtual officers can communicate in all local languages, and encourage widespread usage of these services.
- Agentic AI could respond to the location of the farmer and provide real-time soil and weather information for that precise farmer. The tailor-made info is part of what makes this so special as a solution.
The Impact
AI agents will be able to communicate with and respond, with speech not text, to any question asked by a farmer. The cost of building this AI is not prohibitive, and it can be done locally in Ghana. The impact of such responsive agents, available 24/7 and able to digest information and return answers, guiding farmers in agronomy and also pointing them in the direction of human agents where appropriate, is revolutionary. See the impact this has had in India, where it has boosted crop production by around 30% for smallholder farmers: Satya Nadella on X: "A fantastic example of AI's impact on agriculture. https://t.co/nY9o8hHmKJ" / X
The use of AI agents will increase the capacity of government to interact with farmers. Creating this type of agentic AI for farmers would put the power of tailor-made extension services into the pockets of every farmer that has a smartphone.
Yield intensification will not happen alone or solely because more inputs are provided. The knowledge gap needs to be closed to close the yield gap. 24 hours Extension Agents is part of the solution.
As part of the drive to the 24-hour economy, Extension services will be available to farmers 24/7. Farming already never sleeps and doesn’t obey weekends or holidays, but by providing AI solutions to farmers, the government will be allowing the yield intensification journey to continue at every hour of every day.
This can be delivered by local companies committed to the sector, like Aya Data.
3. Focus on ROI of agricultural interventions
The Problem
Whilst yield intensification should be the guiding principle of all agricultural interventions, they have to come at a justifiable cost. Any intervention needs to be properly assessed for both costs and benefits to understand if it will boost the productivity and profitability of the farmer.
The Solution
There remain ‘easy wins’ in the near term which can quickly and cost-effectively generate significant increases in productivity for a very low cost, with easy changes in behaviour. These wins will generate an ROI of at least 500%, where every cedi spent will generate at least 5 cedis in additional value for the farmer. These, like soil liming, are interventions that are practised almost ubiquitously around the world but are still not done in Ghana due to a lack of product availability and a lack of knowledge of these products.
These easy wins include:
- Encourage widespread inoculation of soybean, maize and vegetable seeds – more information on why this is important is available at https://shorturl.at/qDdWL.
- Promoting under rainfed conditions the use of slow or controlled-release fertilisers to increase nutrient retention and decrease leaching, like Asaase Hene.
- Widespread use of adjuvants to increase the effectiveness of any spraying programme, particularly for pest and disease prevention.
- More widespread usage of improved seed varieties.
The Impact
Much of the work of yield intensification is a consequence of plant nutrition. For the reasons outlined above, even the application of chemical nutrients in the form of plant fertilisers may not be effective because the nutrients will become ‘bound’ to the soil by low pH or leached away due to nutrient volatility or heavy rainfall.
Using inoculants unlocks the central power of soil biology, as opposed to soil chemistry. Bacteria in the inoculants create partnerships with the plant to do things like fix atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogen for the plant, increase germination rates, increase vigour, and boost growth rates. Both chemistry and biology are significant, but the power of inoculation truly needs to be seen to be believed. They are also climate smart, to adapt to the challenges of our changing climate.
Slow and controlled-release fertilisers increase nutrient use efficiency and supply nutrients to the plant when they are needed. They are less volatile, and less of their value is leached away. For example, our Asaase Hene fertiliser has increased cocoa yields by 62.5% as verified by CRIG.
Adjuvants, or ‘stickers’, increase the adherence of chemicals applied in liquid form to plants. They increase effectiveness accordingly and decrease the amount of chemical products required.
Improved seed varieties speak for themselves and are the most likely intervention to significantly increase crop yield (alongside the increased requirement for crop nutrition).
These are not silver bullets
There are no silver bullets in agriculture. Agricultural revolutions happen quietly, over time. They are the product of sustained diligence, investment, and the marriage of good inputs, good management practices, and consistency.
Plainly a huge challenge in our changing climate is the question of water and the increasing requirement for irrigation in an environment where rainfall patterns have become more erratic. Likewise, the increased requirement for fertilisers is a ‘sine qua non’ of the agricultural sector’s growth. We fully and wholly support any intervention from government that would increase investment in these sectors, which are absolutely crucial to the development of the sector.
We have tried to provide in the above simply some thoughts that are not part of the current dialogue in agricultural development that we think would deliver outsized impact for modest financial investment on the part of MOFA. We hope to see some of them on the agenda in the near future.
Important Notice: Independent testing in Ghana of soil neutralisation has led to yield increases of upwards of 50%. Contact our team for more information on these results.
