The Ministry of Food and Agriculture has begun the process of installing irrigation facilities in eight regions to provide an all-year-round production of raw materials to feed the government’s 24-hour policy.

Dubbed, “Irrigation for wealth creation”, the first phase of the program will focus on the Volta, Oti, Central, North East, Northern, Savannah, Upper West, and Upper East regions.

Consequently, the sector minister, Eric Opoku, has tasked regional ministers to lead negotiations to secure 10,000 hectares of land for the project, which will begin immediately after Parliament approves the government’s budget.

The 10,000-hectare target is expected to contribute to the country’s potential irrigable land of 1.9 million hectares.

Currently, only 1.6 percent of the 1.9 million hectares is under irrigation, significantly below the West and Central African average of 13.9 percent.

The regional ministers who met with the Minister of Food and Agriculture yesterday are to begin negotiations with chiefs in the areas marked for the project.

The negotiations, surveying, mapping, and design of the project are expected to begin on February 18, this year.

The minister said phase two would cover all the other regions.

Mr. Opoku said the project aligned with the government’s vision of utilizing agriculture as a driving force for economic growth.

He said farming in Ghana was seasonal, and that the government was resetting the sector by moving away from rainfall to irrigation-based agriculture.

That, he said, would help the farmers to farm throughout the year, adding, “For the 24-hour policy to work to perfection, there is the need to ensure sustainable agriculture production.

“If you set up a factory here that takes raw materials from the agriculture sector and if production is seasonal, agriculture will produce the raw materials for three months and the remaining months will not be functional.

“But if you have an irrigation infrastructure in place to ensure water supply throughout the year it will provide an uninterrupted supply for the industry,” he added.

For areas where smallholder farmers already operate, he said the project would not have a negative impact on them, saying the government would provide them with the facilities to enable them to work throughout the year.

“It is going to affect them positively but as for the land we have the assurance that these are areas earmarked for irrigation long ago, so we only have to finalize the discussions with the chiefs,” he said.

Voice of Eric Opoku