CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of study
Agriculture is the main stay of the economy of most countries the world over – providing food, employment, income, revenue, improving the countries’ balance of payment etc (Baffour-Awuah, 1987). In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) drew attention to the immersed problems and challenges facing the world’s agriculture, if present and future food needs are to be met for new approach to agriculture development. In the remaining years of this century about 1.3 billion people will be added to the human population. The global food system must be managed to increase food production by 3% to 4% yearly (WCED, 1987).
Global food security depends not only on increasing global production but on decreasing distortion in the structure of the world’s food market and on shifting the focus of food production to food deficit countries, regions and households. This shift in agriculture production will be sustainable, enhanced and where it has been diminished/destroyed, restored according to WCED (1987) pg 128-130.
By this, agriculture has been placed on a high agenda of governments of Ghana. One of the priorities of the present and past governments is to make Ghana self-sufficient in food production (Addo-Quaye et.al, 1995).
Example, the National Redemption Council, NRC, in 1972 introduced the Operation Feed Yourself Policy in order to increase food production (Baffour-Awuah, 1987). Schools were therefore made to establish mess farms to feed the students.
However, most agriculture production in the country is subsistence and small scaled with low yields. Even medium and large scale farmers use the common tools like hoe, axe, cutlass etc since most farmers cannot afford mechanization aside the over reliance on rainfall instead of irrigation.
In 1987, the government of Ghana initiated a reform in the education programme with wide ranging objectives. Wheeler (1980) commented about reform in education – if a curriculum remains static in a dynamic society especially in a period of rapid social change, it is likely that the education which is meant to induct the young into the society and to promote an intelligent understanding of it will cater only for the needs and values which no longer exist.