So today I arrived back in Tamale, Northern Ghana. Most of my day was spent greeting people and giving out the obligatory gifts from Canada. I brought back pens – yes laugh at me for bringing back about 100 pens but they are highly appreciated! I never get tired of greeting in Ghana since it is always accompanied by a bright smile.
As I greeted the people at my office I ran into Ayisha. A rice processor who has been struggling to make a go of a business that faces low consumer interest and highly varying input prices.
She said to me: “I have been blessed and my business is doing very well. We have a contract with UNICEF!”
The group had been struggling to receive a decent price and enough demand on the local market. Most consumers prefer to purchase the imported rice that is packaged more nicely and comes with the esteem of being a product from the West.
But the tides are shifting. Last year, EWB and MoFA ran a campaign to encourage consumers to eat Ghana Rice. UNICEF was listening and started creating contracts with processors like Ayisha to buy their rice in Ghana.
Ethical purchasing is a wave that’s catching on all over the world. In Ghana, I work closely with well-educated youth who always buy products from Ghana whenever they can.
In Canada, my friends advocate buying Fair Trade chocolate, not eating meat, shopping at the local farmer’s market. Recently, seeing a gap in the ethical purchasing market, some friends of mine launched Ethical Ocean, an online ethical marketplace aiming to increase the awareness and consumption of ethical products and services in North America. Their goal is to transform the market by connecting buyers and sellers through one easily-navigated website that amasses every type of ethical product imaginable.
https://ethicalocean.com/about-ethical-ocean
I wonder, is this wave of ethical purchasing something that can unite the youth in this world?
This is a story of the environment that an agricultural worker with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture works in. It is a story full of frustration as the Ministry attempted to implement a $600,000 program with funds constantly arriving late. Not an acceptable mistake when you’re supporting the very time sensitive rain-fed agriculture.
The program brought a bit of food and incomes for farmers. But it also brought a myriad of challenges due to the untimely release of funds. The most saddening consequence of this program is the resulting deteriorated trust between the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the farmers whom they were trying to help.
I sat down with Ministry staff yesterday and got the full story behind this.
“$600,000 to increase rice production; that’s a lot of money.” – begins the Ministry staff…
There is tremendous opportunity to increase the volumes of rice produced in Northern Ghana. There is a strong market demand for rice. Quality local rice can offset imported rice and put more money into small-scale farmer’s pockets. In the Northern Region, the climate is perfect for rice cultivation and currently 70% of the country’s production is done in the Northern Region. Investment in the rice sector makes sense.
$600,000 was allocated to the Northern Region to stimulate production through the cultivation of large-scale farms that would be operated by small-scale farmers as a group but funded by the Ministry.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned.
From seed to harvest, resources arrived late.
It began with the seeds. Rice planting in the lowland areas of the Northern Region of Ghana should occur around mid May. The seeds arrived late June. A full 6 weeks late. For rain-fed agriculture, late seeds and planting is a disaster.
Once the seeds were planted harrowing (burying the seeds) was necessary. No money was available for this when it was supposed to happen. But farmers had to go ahead and plant and harrow because it needed to get done.
At the time the seed was broadcasted it was still raining heavily so there was a rush to harrow. Due to the rush and the single harrowing in some cases the viability of the seed was reduced.
Others said there was a ‘shortage’ of tractors, but the real reason for their complaint was that they could not pre-finance and had to wait to get a tractor. When the money came and they hired the tractor, many got stuck in the thick clay-like mud since the tractors entered the fields while the rains were already advanced.
After planting and harrowing a pre-emergence weedicide is typically applied. Pre-emergence means that the weedicide is designed to kill everything, so it should be applied before the rice germinates and emerges. However, the funding wasn’t available to buy pre-emergence weedicide. By the time the funds came, the rice had germinated. Weeds were also growing and often out-competing the rice. Post-emergence weedicide was applied with some success, though obviously less effective than intended. Some people didn’t apply the weedicide because there was too much water.
Next up is the fertilizer. Predictably late as well. Fertilizer is supposed to be applied 14-20 days after germination. Planting occurred late June so fertilizer should have been applied mid-July. The first batch of fertilizer arrived in August.
And there wasn’t enough to go around, so fertilizer was embargoed from the public depots denying other farmers access to fertilizer. This was too bad since the government had gone to lengths to subsidize fertilizer this year. And again, due to the quantity of water on the ground, many couldn’t apply the fertilizer.
It is the end of the rainy season. Rice is typically the last crop to be harvested. Currently, the rice is dried and ready to be harvested, however, there is a shortage of sacks for the Ministry to collect the rice make up their costs. More importantly, there is a shortage of combines to get the rice off the fields.
After harvest, bush fires begin. Some are intentionally started; some start naturally due to the intense heat and dried up plant matter on the fields. This threat is looming over the Ministry staff as they scramble to collect the meagre harvests resulting from this program.
There are only 10 combines in the whole region and 11,000 acres of rice needs to be harvested. These combines can only do 30-40 acres/day. So either farmers harvest themselves which makes it more difficult for the Ministry to recover some of the harvest to offset the costs of inputs, or the crop stays on the field with fingers crossed that the combine arrives in time.
As the Ministry staff finishes the narration, the frustration visible in his expression, he asks me: “Would you want to do agriculture if you had been involved in this program?”
This program was also supposed to get youth into agriculture. It likely had the opposite effect this season due to the untimely release of funds and inputs.
Many farmers wrote letters to the Ministry complaining of the poorly managed program. Many committed not to work with the Ministry in the future. Many just won’t listen to the Ministry next time they tell farmers the proper agricultural techniques – not when the Ministry wasn’t the positive example they should be for timely planting, harrowing, fertilizer application, chemical application and harvesting.
So what can be done?
There is a bright side to this story. We can learn from this experience.
The first learning is that plans should only be implemented if resources are known to exist before implementation begins. The Ministry staff recommended that the government not continue with this program unless next year in April, everything is ready to go. If one thing is missing the Ministry shouldn’t proceed. It’s better to wait than suffer the consequences. This year the program will go on but on time, already staff are meeting about it, months in advance of the rains.
So frustrations have turned into learning that will hopefully lead to more positive returns this year.
The one month long marketing campaign that EWB and MoFA implemented was only an experiment. We wanted to see how people took to the campaign. We had no idea it would lead to this type of success.
The rice processing centre behind the Ministry of Food and Agriculture is teeming with action. Mounds of rice are piled up along the walls. Machines are humming away. There is the smell of rice chaff and sweat in the air.
I greet Meymuna at 8 pm. She’s the head of this operation and has been at work since sunrise. Her cheerful mood is addictive as she and I walk around checking out the work of the 10 or so women who are busy processing rice paddy into high quality, nutritious, delicious Ghana rice.
A year ago this wasn’t a common scene. I hardly saw Meymuna as she had no work to do at this centre.
Meymuna sifts out the stones by hand
Meymuna complained that no one wanted to buy her rice even though it was of high quality. People preferred to purchase the imported rice.
Then EWB and MoFA ran a marketing campaign to promote Ghana Rice. Meymuna and her rice were highlighted as high quality rice that any Ghanaian wishing to support their local economy and eat more healthy should purchase.
As the campaign ran Meymuna started getting more and more business. She doesn’t yet keep records of her business but said that demand more than doubled during the time EWB and MoFA were broadcasting a catchy jingle encouraging people to ‘buy the new improved quality Ghana rice’ and pasting stickers and posters all over town informing people that Meymuna has got quality rice.
Parboiling - now that there's business
Once the campaign ended Meymuna’s business was still strong. She had developed a strong consumer based that kept her active. However, with overcoming that hurdle was another hurdle. Her next challenge was that she couldn’t keep up with the demand. She wanted to buy a de-stoner – a machine that mechanically sorts out the good rice from the foreign matter.
A few months ago, the World Food Program started getting interested in Meymuna and placed an order for 150 bags of rice (one bag is 88 kg). The World Food Program which supports a school feeding program to encourage kids to come to school by giving them a meal has started buying only local produce. This decision has opened up market opportunities for small business owners like Meymuna. The World Food Program also purchased a de-stoner for Meymuna so she could process their order expediently. The de-stoner is a loan which will be paid back as Meymuna sells the rice.
The one month long marketing campaign that EWB and MoFA implemented was only an experiment. We wanted to see how people took to the campaign. We had no idea it would lead to this type of success.
As a testament to the success of the campaign, a development agency that is planning a project in the rice sector has added a marketing campaign into their budget. Over the next 3 years a national level marketing campaign will be implemented. EWB was approached to provide advice on the design of their marketing campaign and was able to make suggestions that will ensure this next marketing campaign will be even better. Ideas such as getting the jingle as people’s ring tone and working closer with the rice processors to establish a marketing brand will be incorporated.
Meymuna is happy about this since she knows that the market for local rice still needs to be improved. More farmers need to be encouraged to increase their productivity as Ghana currently imports 60% of rice consumed.
The Ghana Rice campaign is an example of a successful innovation on two levels. First it triggered growth in Meymuna’s business. Second, because it was first tested locally and deemed successful it will be scaled up to support more small business owners like Meymuna.
On Monday evening I was introduced to “Who Wants to Be Rich?” If you haven’t yet guessed, it’s the Ghanaian equivalent to “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” I wish I could record and re-play this for you! It comes complete with authentic sound effects, familiar lifelines, and of course the hot seat to win a wad of cash—in this case, it’s 50,000 Ghana cedis, or ~$39,000 CAN. The questions were at best midly interesting: “Which bird cannot fly?” A. Penguin, B. Falcon, C. Eagle, D. Crow; “From which country does the panda originate?” A. Russia, B. Finland, C. China, D. Iceland.
Though not all the questions were related to exotic animals, it was not the questions that really caught my attention. It was the advertising.
How is it possible for a game show to offer a jackpot of tens of thousands of dollars in a developing country like Ghana? It’s not rigged to favour the house—actually the host of the show went out of his way to help the contestants! The answer came to me during the breaks: it’s just like any other profitable game show, through sponsorship and advertising.
The sponsor of the show is MTN, one of the big four mobile phone service providers in Ghana. Aspiring contestants must send a SMS text message at the cost of 0.5 Ghana cedis. The more they send, the better their chances of entering the game. And the text message must be sent from an active MTN phone. An active MTN phone requires frequent MTN pay-as-you-go credit top-ups.
All of a sudden, “Who Wants to be Rich?” made a lot more sense.
The half hour game show spurred a question for me: How do we develop commerce to create wealth for many, not only a few?
In principle, this marketing model attempts to pull resources from the masses, and push that wealth to select individuals. I imagine thousands of Ghanaians sent SMS text messages fuelling MTN revenue streams. But MTN only paid wages to dozens of Ghanaians operating the game show.
Now, I don’t believe a 0.5 Ghana cedi SMS text message has a huge negative impact on the life of an average Ghanaian. And MTN indirectly employs tens of thousands of Ghanaians who sell MTN mobile credit. But I sense a huge opportunity to develop ways to create wealth for many, not few. And more energy needs to be spent figuring out how to make this quality of commerce work.
In the past three days, I’ve had fantastic chats with Ghanaian farmers about how satisfied they were with their farms this year. It’s an exciting time of year during the harvest! As always I get a spectrum of responses. But I heard a resounding trend that, “This year, the rains were too much!” Many farmers have suffered low yields because their fields received excess rain.
Rains matter a lot when the size of your harvest depends on them. Yet rain is unpredictable, uncontrollable, and has an increasing likelihood that it will not be ‘just right’ for farming. From a farm business perspective, it’s the worst type of risk possible.
Diversification has been the traditional development answer—farmers should have a variety of crops as well as rear animals. This makes a lot of sense since it’s a form of insurance where if one crop fails, farmers will rely on the other to do well. But this still has the farmer bearing the risks. Regardless, it’s not always possible to do with small micro-credit loans which must cover ploughing, fertilizer, seeds, labour. I’m looking to experiment with another answer: formalize the insurance.
Insurance policies aren’t a new idea, it’s a massive industry built around dealing with risks like rain. Micro-insurance isn’t a new idea either. I’m looking to couple insurance to flexible, low-interest loans for farmers.
The Abokobisi women’s group received a 100 Ghana cedi loan. They spent 70 on a group project to crop a half acre of soybean. The remaining they spent on dry-season diversification to process dowa-dowa, a local ingredient for soup. The women explain that their soybean field yielded poorly due to the excess rain. They want access to a loan next season so they are afraid to default. The women say they will repay the loan from their own pockets. But this will hinder them in the dry-season, which is when farming is replaced with processing and petty trading.
What if they purchased rain insurance for 20 Ghana cedis, and were covered up to 100 Ghana cedis in case of a rain disaster? The group wouldn’t have to fear defaulting on their loan because of poor rains outside of their control. They would have 100 Ghana cedis to re-invest in processing and trading when farming is difficult in the dry-season. They will not have been pushed down by the difficult circumstances of their environment, but rather pushed up by something that works for them.
The idea is still in its infancy and I have questions upon questions on how to make it work:
- What disasters should be compensated?
- How do we measure the extent of those disasters?
- How do we ensure the accuracy and legitimacy of those measurements?
- How do we explain the concept to farmers?
- How do we not skew farmer incentives for good production performance?
- How much should/will farmers pay for the policy?
- How much compensation should claims receive?
- How many policies need to be sold for this to be sustainable? Does it have to be sustainable, or could it be a form of development aid to subsidize insurance schemes?
- What is a farmer’s response to this attempt to formalize insurance? People informally ‘insure’ each other by relying on each other during difficult times. Will formal insurance compliment these social relationships in case everyone in the community faces difficult times?
So far in conversations with farmers, some have likened the idea to a local health insurance scheme, named Ghana Health Insurance. They felt rain insurance would be a good idea. Encouraging feedback to take forward!
I’m headed out to live and work with the Abokobisi women’s group all weekend. I’m excited to deepen my understanding of the situation and have good conversations about solutions. Maybe this leads nowhere, but this is how innovations are born!
Working with Mr. Ben is the kind of stuff they don’t teach you in agriculture college. Victoria Anamo is a field staff for the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Ghana. She provides advice and support to the farmers of Yameriga community. Vic was trained as a technical expert – train to identify pests and diseases that can affect crops and trained on the proper practices required to ensure optimal crop yield. However, work in the field is much less about the technical stuff and more about people.
As an engineer, I think this is also similar to our profession. In school we are taught formulas, high levels of detail on the CDMA encoding process, how to analyze a 3-phase high voltage power system, however in the real world our success hinges much more on our ability to work with people.
Vic is smart though and with little resources and management support she’s still managed to teach herself the tricks of the trade. One is to work with Mr. Ben.
Mr. Ben shows Vic and I his beautiful farm
Mr. Ben is a school teacher for Yameriga. He’s a very hard worker but despite this only makes $120/month. So he supplements he meagre income by farming. Vic knows that Mr. Ben, being a more educated member of the community is naturally well-respected. He’s also the youngest brother of the chief so his place gets a lot of traffic. She also knows that he has a bit more resources and therefore is more willing to take a risk on a new idea.
Last week I stayed with Mr. Ben and observed all of the new ideas he’s taken on. He’s raising guinea fowl – a highly wild form of a fowl that requires a lot of care an attention to get over the 80% mortality rate that is typical of most farmers. Mr. Ben has got himself a local hen to raise the guinea fowl – mother guinea fowl will just leave her chicks to fend for themselves. He keeps the 3 day old chicks (actually called keets) in his cooking room to keep them warm and away from diseases. Every morning he goes and lays down cow manure on termite mounds. In the evening he collects the dung which has now become infested with ants and termites. This is a nutritious meal for his guinea fowl.
Mr Ben lays down manure
Mr. Ben feeds his guinea fowls
The first thing Mr. Ben told me is “I’m not a common man.” He backed it up by showing me the countless awards and recognition he’s received for being a top teacher. Also poorly resourced, incentivized and supported he still challenges himself to educate all of the kids in his classroom.
It gives me hope to know uncommon people like Vic and Mr. Ben. Ghana’s development will be driven by such amazing people who despite a poor environment go beyond the stuff they teach you in school.
EWB is currently working with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to develop creative performance based incentives to reward field staff like Vic. We are also embedded in the agriculture college developing a softer curriculum that can teach some of the concepts Vic has learned on her own.
Last week I shadowed Fatawu (“Fah-tow”, say the ‘ow’ like you were just pricked by a pin). He’s a young, talented field staff in the Ghana Ministry of Food & Agriculture, and who’s proud to have a smile that won’t quit. For three days, we worked in a community just under two hours from Tamale metropolis. Our two hour motorcycle ride actually only translates into roughly 70km. But we didn’t mind the pot-hole ridden mud road. It was the beginning of a three day conversation.
I went into the experience open to going with the flow—though that’s necessary whether I choose to or not! But I was also interested in exploring several things to deepen my understanding of them. What motivates stellar MoFA field staff to perform at their best? What does trust mean to rural farmers, and how does one build trust with farmers? Does facilitating cost-benefit analysis support better farmer decision-making, and what is a good process to do that? Those were some of the questions floating around my mind throughout the three days. I thought I’d share a few words on what I learned about each question.
What motivates stellar MoFA field staff to perform at their best?
In a sentence, the best field staff are internally motivated, and Fatawu is no exception. Despite low salaries and hard working conditions, Fatawu cares about the legacy he leaves in his communities. He’s encouraged by the kudos farmers offer: “You’re hard working!“, “Marry my daughter!“
Having grown up as a child in a farming family, he is used to village life, and enjoys working in his communities. He genuinely loves to farm. As Fatawu says, “Seeing your crop grow, you feel happy!” And it’s infectious—it certainly inspired me to try a small farm.
It’s easy to see that Fatawu is ambitious. Many Ghanaians have desires to further their education, but few take steps toward realizing their aims. Fatawu has a plan and is creatively pursuing his aims to earn a degree. I even sensed some political ambitions—a smart goal given the trust and support he has with the farmers in his communities.
He also seems to have a natural curiosity when it comes to agriculture. We chatted at length about trends he has observed on the farm. One trend that stands out was the negative effects of a particular pesticide on certain crop varieties after several years of usage. To figure out why it was happening, Fatawu went as far as looking up the pesticide’s active ingredient, and e-mailing experts about his observation, looking for answers.
The question on my mind now is what mechanisms would inspire these internal motivations among Fatawu’s fellow field staff? Maybe more frequent events where farmers can publicly recognize the work of MoFA field staff? Maybe more defined career paths and support to realize ambitious aims? Maybe more of a questioning, learning organizational culture to motivate agricultural experimentation and discovery?
How does one build trust with farmers?
This question is especially important in our era of making markets work for the poor, and the decade of value-chain approaches in international development. We’ve seen tomato processing operations collapse because there was little trust between farmers and processors. So I tried to observe Fatawu’s relationships with farmers to suss out how he earns their trust.
One way which stands out is to enable farmers to feel proud. Farmers love to showcase their fields and entertain visitors, so long as its an invited visit. And when you schedule a visit to a farmer’s field, you have to go all the way. Some field staff meet the farmer, but turn back when the mud is too much, or water too high. Fatawu made it a point that we struggle through with the farmers. It’s also why he answers their calls, and makes time to meet farmers even when they knock at his door at dawn. These acts of being reliable go a long way with earning trust.
My question now is would this work in commercial relationships? Would it encourage loyalty and prevent breaching contracts from both sides (farmers and agribusiness)? My standing hypothesis is that building trust with farmers takes repeated successful transactions, so could farm visits and answering calls serve as quick ‘transactions’?
What is an effective process to facilitate cost-benefit analysis to support better farmer decision-making?
Fatawu and I had pre-arranged to meet with three farmer groups in nearby communities. We had to settle for just one meeting as the other two were rained out. We tried to facilitate a process that helps the group analyze their farming activities for maize in a single cropping season, the labour required, cash spent, and the expected harvest and profit. Using this method, we compared costs and benefits for the food crop, maize, to soybean, primarily a cash crop. And the intent was not only to explore economic benefits (e.g. cash income, and by-products like fodder or housing materials), but also social and political.
- Group members overlooking the soybean budget
- Maize budget
The results were mixed. The analysis itself was less nuanced than I had hoped for, and thus probably of deceptive value. But the feedback was encouraging enough that I feel its worthwhile to refine the process…
The first problem was that we broke the rule of thumb of holding a meeting no longer than two hours. The analysis process as it is takes too long. We were actually interrupted by the three o’clock call to prayer because we started late after a short morning rain. I used it as an opportune indicator of how useful the process was perceived after our first hour. About half the crowd returned to the scene. Not bad! The rest were understandably eager to apply fertilizer or weed their fields during the break in rain.
What was most encouraging were those who returned. “We never thought to sit down and consider all our expenses.” While walking to and from the Mosque, they were analyzing their own fields, totaling everything they had invested. Whether or not this leads to raising their incomes is still a big question. It’s a first step to knowing their break-even point and what could be done differently in order to benefit more from their fields. But there are likely still major constraints like powerful middlemen dictating low prices at harvest season, and poor roads that limit profitable alternative marketing channels. Still, the trend is positive.
