Pastor Mensa Otabil has said he does not believe in the idea that the youth should go into farming.
“By no means am I saying that farming is not good, but most farmers are not farmers by choice in Ghana. Most African farmers are not farmers by choice; they are farmers by force because there is nothing to do,” the founder of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) said in church on Sunday, 2 October, adding: “I don’t believe in the youth going into farming.”
Teaching his congregation about identifying people’s talent and making the best of it, Dr Otabil said he found it befuddling that a country like Ghana would be pushing young people into farming when already 70% of Ghanaians are farmers.
“I believe that a nation should not be encouraging everybody to be farmers. I don’t think we need more than 5% of Ghanaians as farmers. All we need to do is to do it well so a few people can produce for more than all of us.
“Less than 3% of most developed nations are into agriculture. The whole agricultural industry, including those who produce, process and market and everything in the United States is just about 6%. Here [in Ghana] we have 70% [of people in farming] – not processing, but producing – and we can’t feed ourselves.
“It’s not the number of people in farming, it’s the quality of the farming and we shouldn’t be pushing young bright people and say: ‘Go to the land!’. That’s not the way. I don’t want to have people with talent reduced to farmers and miners and workers with their body. I want people to work with their brain, with their ideas,” he said.
Join GhanaStar.com to receive daily email alerts of breaking news in Ghana. GhanaStar.com is your source for all Ghana News. Get the latest Ghana news, breaking news, sports, politics, entertainment and more about Ghana, Africa and beyond.
