Transcript
Host (0:00)
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Kwambuachi (0:22)
Yes.
Host (0:23)
Why did they not push you into farming?
Kwambuachi (0:24)
Because the thing was, okay, I want Kwambuachi to be a doctor, I want him to be an engineer. Yep.
Host (0:32)
But you are back to it now.
Kwambuachi (0:33)
Yes. No, I started school in Bru and a half. Yeah, yeah. My grandparents were cocoa farmers, big cocoa farms in, in AFU area. That was where I grew up. So I don't come from a rich family. Okay, okay, okay. Not a poor family, but yeah, it's a cocoa farming family.
Host (0:51)
So, sir, this, this makes me understand that we have left farming for the people who quote unquote, cannot read and write. Even those people, they push their children to be, to become crutch. And there you go. So farming to the average person, young person, is not something they look at as, it's a path to societal respect or dignity.
Kwambuachi (1:19)
Yes. And that has to stop. No Minister of Agriculture will send these agriculture extension officers. I mean, you're going to advise somebody who is working on maybe one acre or one plot of land. He's a peasant farmer feeding his children. Probably the nation should start thinking about large scale farms. But our history with government led operations, not that great. Okay, not that great, but we can create something. Like some people can come together and say, hey, we're going to do this.
Host (1:54)
So I mean, retrospect to what we've discussed about parents pushing children into education and them not seeing farming as a job that will give the person respect because they want to really speak to their friends and say, sure, my son is a doctor, you know, my daughter is a pilot. Right. Or an engineer. What advice do you have for the young people?
Kwambuachi (2:15)
Education is very, very important. We need to probably revamp the way we teach people. When I was growing up, they punish you and they ask you to go and weed. So you grew up thinking, okay, weeding is a form of punishment. Farming is a form of maybe exaggerated punishment. So I'm not going to do it. People have farmed and realized that, okay, I'm not making money, he's on a cocoa farm, he cannot even send his son to school. However, if we are able to revamp the way we teach and the way we explain Our Greek to people. People will get to know that, hey, I can be a BSc, a PhD and till the ground and make lots and lots of money. I mean you were in the uk, you can. There are farmers there. Oh yeah, milk and cows. I was in Japan. A lot of the rich people are farmers. You go to the. We go to the usa, maybe Brazil, the same thing. Why have we pushed our Greek to the background? We talk a lot. It looks like, okay, I came to Ghana and then I realized that okay, there's an industry on talking about our problems. There's a big industry about talking. Every day you hear people talking about problems. This is what we are going to do and nothing is done. We need to move from there, put things on the ground. Everybody can identify the issues we have, but are we actually tackling them? No food. Bringing tomatoes from Burkina Faso, 100 million per annum. That's an opportunity for the youth. If we can buy $100 million worth of tomatoes from Burkina Faso, what are you doing in Ghana? Why can't you target 1%? That's 1 million. Yeah, this is not the government spending money there. These are custom entries. The cash is moving from Ghana to buy those tomatoes or whatever from Burkina Faso, from wherever. So why can't we set up farms and then supply these ladies who are going to Burkina Faso to buy tomato? The thinking should change from yeah, that is an opportunity. Now how do you harness that opportunity? So that is the issue because for a 25 year old guy, where is he going to get 50,000, 100,000 to do that kind of work?
