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The importance of food in the survival instinct of mankind is vividly captured in the Lord�s Prayer, bequeathed by the founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ our Saviour, and universally acknowledged as the Son of the living God. �Give us our daily bread�� is captured even before the appeal to the Almighty God to �forgive us our trespasses.� In the ordinary diction of those of us on earth, �Soldiers march on their stomachs� is one refrain that captures the essence of food in the survival instincts of all living beings. All over the world, the major pre-occupation of governments is to ensure that the ordinary citizen could afford the prices of basic food items to feed himself and the family. In Europe and the America�s it is an unwritten law that no citizen should go to bed hungry. That is why the government go out of its way to subsidise agricultural implements and inputs to ensure that farmers and fisher folks produce enough food and fish to feed the population. Unfortunately, in this part of the world, many governments rise to power without the zeal to ensure that those who break their backs to feed the nation are aided by deliberate state policies to do so. During the Kufuor Administration, the government conceived a perfect state policy to aid the local rice and poultry industry by slapping extra duties on imported poultry and rice. The policy was hailed as the right recipe to boost local agriculture. Unfortunately, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which should have applauded the policy and given it support, growled at it. The government buckled and the policy was thrown out of the window. My understanding, talking to a member of the administration later, was that the rejection was seriously resented within the government, and gingered members of the regime to begin measures to wean Ghana off the hold of the Breton Wood institutions of the IMF and the World Bank. Unfortunately for this hapless nation, when the government of President John Evans Atta Mills took over and tried to impress Ghanaians on its credentials to manage the economy better than its predecessor, it found solace in the arms of the IMF and World Bank. On Wednesday, the state administration, under the leadership of President John Dramani Mahama, deceased President Mills� understudy who now leads the nation from Jubilee House, took a bill to Parliament seeking to increase levies on some agricultural implements and fishing inputs. According to The Chronicle correspondent in the House, items to be levied include outboard motors, known in local parlance as �Ahead�, fishing nets, agricultural machinery, dairy milking machines, clubs and arrows and cutlasses. Energy saving bulbs and book binding machines were also to attract the new levy. These are aside of the controversial talk tax that has set the communications operators and the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications up in arms. The reason assigned by Dr. Benjamin Kunbuor, leader of Government Business, for the price hike is that revenue accrued from the taxes would shore up a shortfall of a whooping GH�8 billion in state expenditure for the year that is at the half-way stage. An estimated revenue of GH�208 million is to be realised from the levy, according to those who tabled the bill in Parliament. Deputy Minister of Finance Cassiel Ato Baah Forson told the House that the revenue mobilised from taxing the poor in the farming and fishing communities, from Axim to Paga and Aflao to Elubo, would �ensure fiscal stability and provide resources for investment in social services and infrastructure across the country.� Members of the Minority in the House though, would not have any of those explanations which have been over-flogged by a bungling administration which appears to have perfected the art of reversing all the gains made by the eight years of the Kufuor administration. When he caught the Speaker�s eye, Member of Sekondi Paapa Owusu Ankomah asked the House to extend the same courtesies given to fertilisers. Fertiliser benefitted from members vote to reject any tariff increase on it. �By parity of reasoning, the amendment should be extended to outboard motors,� Paapa pleaded. �We should delete any levy to be imposed on outboard motors.� His argument was shot down by Deputy Minister of Finance Forson, who is likely to face hostilities from hard-up farmers in his constituency in Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam. Mr. Forson�s argument was that because the government was subsidising pre-mix fuel by as much as 50 percent, there was no need to remove subsidies on out-board motors. It is my humble opinion that the entire population joins in this fight to protect our farmers and fisher-folks, who are already sacrificing so much to feed the nation. In many societies in the West, where the average farmer or fisherman has the resources to eke out a meaningful existence, the state subsidises their activities. In the United States, Britain and many developed societies, governments go out of their way to provide incentives in the form of subsidies for farmers to feed the nation and provide enough for export. It is amazing that in our part of the world, where farmers and fishermen are at the very bottom of the league table of well-being, the state rather wants to tax them more to paper up cracks in mal-administration. After squandering our little resources to buy the vote, we should stop this bungling administration from destroying our means of livelihood, and destroying our farmers and fisher-folk. Last year, the Government of President Mahama overspent its budget by as much as GH�8.7 billion. By conservative estimate, that amounted to a cool $5 billion of state money spent without authority from the people who own it. As you read this piece, neither the President nor any of his officials has found it necessary to even brief the nation on how state money has been used without authority. In life, generally, if you spend money someone has entrusted unto your care without the authority of the owner, it amounts to stealing. The interesting thing is that the chunk of the GH�8.7 billion was spent during the four months of campaigning for the elections. In other words, the government spent that quantum of money to bribe the electorates for votes. By the introduction of the levy on farming and fishing implements, the government is asking the farmers, whom it bribed to secure their votes, to return the bribery money and other items. It is my submission that as Ghanaians we owe it a duty to resist this taxation, for the sake of saving the farming and fishing professions in this country. I am of the view that the new levies would increase the cost of doing business, as farmers and fishermen, in turn, would pass on the extra cost on the people of Ghana. Already, food security is a problem in this country. �As many as 12.7 million people out of Ghana�s population of 24 million are unable to afford the cost of food,� The Chronicle reported last year, based on the findings of Gallup poll in the country. At the moment, we are told that the country faces a 50 percent deficit in fish supply, the main protein diet of the people. We are told further that fish constitutes 60 percent of the diet of the average Ghanaian. Why should we sit aloof when this administration, which continues to dissipate state resources in ventures that do not aid the progress of this country, puts our farmers and our fisher-folks in danger, and ultimately, sacrifice the food security of our people? Just before composing this piece, my attention was drawn to the fact that preliminary results from the Ghana Comprehensive Food and Vulnerability Assessment indicate that as of May 2012, over one million population of this country were food insecure. The condition of food security, according to experts, is when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient food to meet their needs. Incidentally, I was glancing through the NDC Manifesto, the official social contract signed by President Mahama on the campaign trail in the 2012 Presidential and Legislative elections with the people of Ghana, when I noticed that the pledge in the manifesto was a far cry from the treatment being meted out to our fishing and fisher-folk. �Ghana�s agricultural modernisation has been stunted by poor infrastructure, transport, irrigation and social infrastructure,� the NDC Manifesto complained. �Yet, Ghana�s strength is its agriculture base and its potential to turn agriculture into industrial growth,� the manifesto attested. Five years after taking power, agriculture, as per capita of GDP, has rather shrunk. To quote a typical Ashanti proverb: �If you cannot resource your mother in law, you do not steal her little possession.� We all have a duty to stop this government from destroying the little left of our farming and fishing industry. I shall return!