The ranking member on Parliament’s Select Committee on Agricultural, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto is predicting hard times for farmers because of lack of resources for the sector.

According to him, though allocation to the Ministry of Agriculture represents 2.2 percent of the 2014 budget, over 70 percent of that will go into the payment of salaries of employees at the ministry with the rest subsidizing fertilizer.

He tells Joy News' parliamentary correspondent Elton John Brobbey that government needs to urgently review the policy on fertilizer distribution in view of the massive smuggling of the product to neighbouring countries.

"The policy by which fertilizers are distributed to farmers is the wrong policy because it encourages smuggling," Dr. Afriyie Akoto noted.

Additionally, the ranking member indicated that there was no way of tracking the destination of the fertilizers in view of the massive leakages that exist in the system.

He therefore recommended that the pass book system, which allows farmers to confirm and prove that they have received a number of fertilizers as subsidies should be re-introduced.

Meanwhile, ahead of the celebration of the 29th Farmer’s Day at Sogakope in the Volta region tomorrow, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Manso Adubia in the Ashanti region, Yaw Addo Frimpong, is leading a crusade to discourage the youth from venturing into farming.

"Until things change in this country, I will be a crusader against the youth going into agriculture", he warned.

According to the MP, until the policy on agriculture in the country is changed, the sector will not see much youth taking up farming due to the lack of resources for the sector.

 "Farmers have become poorer and we are going to become poorer in 2014," Addo Frimpong emphasized.

Winners of past farmers’ day awards are lamenting they are still yet to receive their prizes.

 President of the National Farmers and Fishermen Winners Association of Ghana Philip Abayori says the situation is demoralizing.

”The farmers really complain because if I am awarded a house, definitely I will want to have it immediately because it is my award...last year for instance, a number of farmers or award winners complained that they have not received their awards", he noted, adding that the awards taking a long time in getting to the award winners demoralized them.

In another development, the People’s National Convention (PNC) is championing proposals for citizens to relinquish a portion of their salaries to farmers.

The party says the money should be put in an Agricultural Investment Fund and distributed to farmers.

"It is not sufficient to just get our farmers and non-farmers and to have a national holiday and go and sleep.

"We think that we should contribute to the survival of what has sustained us and therefore the PNC is urging that a day's income should be put into agricultural fund to make farming sustainable to the farmers," he said.

Responding to issues of award winning farmers not getting their awards on time, the Deputy Agriculture Minister, Dr. Alhassan Yakubu Ahmed noted that there had been some challenges at getting the prizes organized.

According to him, since the national best farmer award had to be a building, land acquisition had been a problem since the land available for the project should be problem-free and the necessary documents should be on hand before construction takes place.

Dr. Yakubu said the Ministry of food and Agriculture does not owe any farmer an award, adding that the house for the 2011 national best farmer is almost complete with that of the 2012, under construction.

He further denied that government does not provide adequate resources for the Agricultural sector, noting that Government does its best in providing the sector with resources as it mobilizes funds from other sources to build the sector.