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White-collar jobs are taking on traditional roles
Traditional and ancient activities such as hunting and wildlife, palm wine extraction and agriculture, which have been around for centuries and represented the socio-economic and cultural life of the Dormaan people, are rapidly fading.
The city of Dormaa, located in the forest belt of the Bono region, which was carved out of the former Brong-Ahafo region of Ghana, has its indigenous people mainly engaged in subsistence farming, where families grew food crops such as yams. , pepper, onion and banana in small plots of land for their daily consumption and survival.
In addition to cocoa trees, which were grown for commercial purposes, palm trees and cola nuts were also grown. They cleared the bushes in the dry season, from December to March, and prepared the land for planting immediately after the arrival of the rains.
Formerly, the common drink was palm wine, extracted from the oil palm. Palm wine pickers cut down rotten palm trees, which also produced mushrooms that met the family’s nutritional and protein needs. They used the branches of the palm to produce baskets to carry food and mats on which they slept. They made fish traps or ‘Nsowa’ with the branches to catch fish and crabs from streams for their daily consumption. They also produced cola nuts to generate income.
Barimah Ansu Gyeabour, the Adomakohene of the Dormaa Traditional Area, said that the Dormaa people, in addition to being farmers, were practitioners of traditional herbal medicine, relying on plants and herbs to treat illnesses and ailments.
This practice has existed to this day, after orthodox medicine dominated the scene for a few years. In recent times it seems that the practice of traditional or herbal medicine has resurfaced and gained roots and, to some extent, has rubbed shoulders with orthodox medicines.
Cocoa as a crop widely cultivated by the natives of Dormaa
The cacao tree was introduced by Tetteh Quarshie during the latter part of the 19th century. There was a ready market for cocoa beans, so many Dormaa residents cultivated large plantations, which paid off dividends, providing better living conditions for farmers. The earliest time to expect a good cocoa yield was from the sixth year of cultivation, so the farmers grew other foods for their maintenance until the cocoa trees began to bear fruit.
Angelina Danquah, a professor of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), said that the majority of Dormaa natives were indigenous cocoa farmers and traders who used the proceeds to care for their families, support their children’s education and others. family members and acquire property, including houses and farms.
The search for ‘clerical jobs’ and how cocoa cultivation has declined over the years
Although agriculture, especially the cultivation of cocoa, remains a primary concern of the natives of Dormaa over the years, it has become less and less attractive to the youth of the area.
Agriculture, including the cultivation of cocoa, is still widely carried out in Dormaa and mostly supervised by older men and women, who often seem frail to work on such farms due to old age.
This has raised serious concerns about the sustainability and future of the cocoa industry in the area, where most young people find cocoa cultivation and other traditional occupation; palm wine extraction, hunting or hunting and wildlife are unattractive and therefore they do not want to participate in them.
Therefore, they prefer modern jobs like teaching, medical practice, nursing, engineering, journalism, electrical engineering, ICT, and building construction to name a few.
Station 2 officer Samuel Adjei from Dormaa Central Fire Station said, for example, that hunting activities over the years had declined, attributing this to the introduction of statutes and task forces regulating such activities.
“The placement of the January-March ban was lifted after a period to ensure that hunters get back to their game,” he said.
Government intervention to modernize agriculture
In seeking to modernize agriculture, the government has introduced several policy initiatives to make it attractive to farmers, particularly young people. These interventions are being implemented throughout the country.
Mr. Charles Aboyella, Municipal Director of the Dormaa Central Ministry of Food and Agriculture, said that Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) was the government’s flagship program to address the problem of profitability and the unattractiveness of agriculture to Young.
“Those who venture into vegetable production get improved seeds at government subsidized rates with machinery and irrigated agriculture where farming is done near a river or stream, which supports the cultivation of cabbage, lettuce and carrots,” he said. .
In addition, many farmers are venturing into business diversification by adding poultry and agribusiness to supplement their main source of income. As a result of the focus on poultry farming in Dormaa, over the years, the city has become extremely popular with the trade, regarded as one of the centers for chicken and egg production, and most of the young people of the zone are dedicated to that.
The government, in an effort to support and sustain agriculture, since 1983, after wildfires destroyed farmland and brought famine to the country, instituted a national award scheme celebrated on Farmer’s Day to reward farmers. brave for your contribution to feeding the nation and beyond.
