A Move That All Local Government Authorities Should Copy

Editorial050724
The local authority in the Sekyere Afram Plains District, Ashanti Region, is taking steps to enact a bye-law to
regulate cattle rearing to help prevent conflict between farmers and herdsmen in the area.
The move follows proposals from research conducted between 2019 and 2024 into the activities of herdsmen and
farmers in the locality.
When finalised, the law will require herdsmen to obtain “a herding permit” from the District Assembly and “a land
allocation permit” from landowners before cattle graze in the area.
It makes provision for compensation for farmers in the event of crop damage, establishment of District Herding
Committee, and also prohibits night grazing among others.
Dr Osei Tutu of the Faculty of Renewable Natural Resources, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and
Technology, made this known at a stakeholder meeting in Accra to discuss findings of the ReDIAL project funded
by the European Union and implemented by local partners.
The project seeks to “contribute to innovation in agriculture and food systems in Ghana through research,
application of technology, organisation of farmers and multi-stakeholder platforms for policy reforms.”
The Daily Searchlight has been suggesting for years, that cattle rearing, like farming, should be seen as a business.
We have said on many occasions that Ghana requires the economic input supplied by both farmers and cattle
herders. We have insisted, again over many years, that it is a tragedy that we have allowed these two major
economic contributors to be at each other’s throats, instead of finding a lasting solution.
The solution, as we see it, is for Ghana to adopt a type of ranching system as happens in the United States, where
owners of cattle acquire land on which to hold their herds, and on which they grow the wheat and barley to feed the
cattle.
We believe that it is necessary that cattle owners are educated that it is unhealthy and unproductive for cattle to be
allowed to roam at will, eating and drinking all manner of things, which, at the end of the day, make their meat
unwholesome, but which all of us consume.
We hope that the initiative from Sekyere Afram Plains District in the Ashanti Region will be copied by other
assemblies across the nation, to bring sanity into the cattle rearing business.