Ghana is home to some of the world’s best arable lands, yet it is the country with one of the biggest food import bills.
Food imports cost the country over $3.5 billion in 2023, according to Statista, a German-based online data portal – draining Ghana’s already strained foreign exchange and further straggling local farmers.
As a nation, we import almost everything edible – from rice to offal, locally called ‘yemuadie,’ as local production continues to suffer largely due to limited policy interventions that can stand the test of time.
Sadly a 2020 World Bank report shows that 12 percent of the youth are unemployed and more than 50 percent are underemployed.
With many youths idling after fruitless searches for jobs, one would have thought that farming and food production would have become the ‘go to’ or at least ‘makeshift’ occupation or jobs for these youngsters to make ends meet while hoping to land their dreams jobs to build careers.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. As the population increases, Ghana has failed to produce adequate food for its people, creating food insufficiency that is almost a national security challenge, if not for the growing imports.
Past efforts
This is not a new problem. Since independence, Ghana has struggled to produce enough food for its citizens, resulting in various interventions by previous governments to address the bottlenecks, soar up domestic food production and cut down on imports for the economy to breath.
Perhaps, the most popular of them is Colonel (rtd) I.K. Acheampong’s Operation Feed Yourself launched barely a month after he captured power in 1972.
The program aimed to encourage more Ghanaians into farming while energizing traditional farmers to increase production.
To achieve this, the government supported the program with subsidized farm inputs, access to credit facilities and duty-free importation of agricultural machinery. It also recruited extension officers to support farmers apply good agronomy practices to help increase production.
There were also sustained public sensitizations, drawing enthusiasm from Ghanaians for the program and resulting in broad-based participation by the populace.
The results were largely satisfactorily though the fruits could not be sustained beyond the Acheampong regime.
Subsequently, various governments embarked on similar programs with similar intentions.
The most recent government intervention to address the food security challenge is the Planting for Food and Jobs initiative. Introduced in 2017, the program was spearheaded by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture aimed at supporting farmers and other citizens to produce food.
It took different shades, with people interested in raring also supported to increase livestock production. A phase two was also launched in 2023.
Though a great initiative, reports from farmer-based organization, civil society groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) showed that the PFJ faced several challenges, leading to limited successes.
Indeed, the country’s sustained and worsening food import bill shows that none of these agricultural programs succeeded as expected. And if they did succeed, today’s food challenges show that the successes and/or the programs have not been sustainable.
This is despite the fact that millions, if not billions of Ghana cedis, from state and donor funds have been poured into these interventions.
In the case of the PFJ for instance, reports showed that almost GHS3 billion have been poured into the phase one (between 2017 and 2023). Additional spending was done on the phase in 2023 and 2024.
Tracking the mistakes
With the scarce national resources being used to fund these programs, everything must be done to ensure that we get adequate and sustainable results from such interventions.
