The Minister for Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku, has debunked claims that there is food insecurity in the country.
According to him, food is in abundance, and the ministry, through buffer stock, is in the process of buying these excess foods.
Answering questions about his ministry on the floor of Parliament on Tuesday, February 10, 2025, the minister urged his colleagues to share details of people who are food insecure for the ministry to go to their aid.
“As a nation, we are building food buffers. If you say that you have conducted a survey, and the findings include the fact that some people are food insecure, indicate to us the locations so that we can go to our stores and make food available to them, and they will be fed. That’s all.
“We’ve also spoken to ECOWAS. This time around, we are not going to borrow rice. We are not going to borrow maize. Rather, we are asking them to come and buy from us here,” he said.
The minister continued that a lot of mechanisms were being put in place to draw out the excess food, “and that is why I’m worried about our colleagues who, in spite of this situation, are saying that there is food insecurity. Is it because they are living in a different world or what? That’s the problem I have.”
INSECURITY
Some members of the minority had raised concerns about the fact that farmers were complaining that people were not buying their farm produce.They variously asked the minister what steps he was “going to take to solve this very problem?”
The MP for Bimbilla, Dominic Nitiwul, indicated that farmers take their produce to the market, but people are not buying, “and they will have to take it back.”
“They will take it the next week, people will not buy, and they will take it back. Whether it is turmeric, whether it is rice, whether it is maize, whether it is pepper, whether it is dry okra, they are not buying. How are you going to make sure that, that problem is resolved for farmers?”
VALUE
The minister in his answer said the government would champion value addition, thus launching the Feed the Industry programme, under the ministry of Agribusiness.
“Just last week, we sent our (Techiman market) team there to go and buy maize, and it’s around 500 Ghana cedis,” he said, adding that the farmers are worried that they are not getting the prices they want.
“And that is the situation. In the face of abundance, certainly, price will collapse. But we have to put in place mechanisms to protect the interest, the investment of these farmers.
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