Emmanuel Wullingdool, an Agriculture Consultant who doubles as the Executive Director for the Centre for Women in Agriculture and Nutrition (CWAN) has expressed some disaffection for the Minister of Food and Agriculture’s suggestion that Ghana has produced so much food that the country’s “hungry” neighbours are trooping in to buy food products.
It would be recalled that speaking on Joy News earlier, Dr. Afriyie Akoto said that the government’s flagship agricultural programme, Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) has led to a bumper harvest within the northern half of the country. As such, there was more than enough food to feed the country along with excess supply for export.
The minister claimed trucks from sister African countries were making their way into Ghana to purchase food products back to their countries.
“In Ghana, we have done very well. If you go, at the moment, to the North, you will see a lot of these trucks with foreign number plates crisscrossing, buying food to take back to their country because they don’t have food, we have food. And it is acknowledged by the international community, our neighbours that we have done extremely well with Planting for Food and Jobs and the data is very clear on that,” he stated in an interview on JoyNews TV.
In sharp contrast, however, Mr. Wullingdool who spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East sought to differ from the Minister’s position.
He said it was quite surprising that the Minister would say the Northern half of the country had abundant food supply when the Upper West Region, for example, has the highest food inflation of 24.7 per cent [according to the Ghana Statistical Service] may be misleading.
Mr. Wullingdool added that for Dr. Akoto’s comments about the abundance of food to be valid, there needed to be a trifecta; accessibility to food, affordability of food prices and high nutrition value of food products.
Quoting the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Mr. Wullingdool explained that until such a time when residents in Northern Ghana would be able to access food products easily, find the food products at relatively affordable prices to purchase and gain valuable nutritional content from it, the Minister’s comment should be disregarded.
The Executive Director for CWAN reminded the Minister that Ghana still had to escort trucks to neighbouring Burkina Faso to cart huge amounts of fresh tomatoes for local consumption.
“We are importing a lot of tomatoes from Burkina Faso when we could equally develop our own irrigation systems here to produce these tomatoes that will be available at cheaper prices to the people,” he added.
Considering just the availability of food, Mr. Wullingdool again explained that the Minister’s comments could not be considered as accurate looking at the uneven distribution of rainfall, shortage of fertilizers at a critical stage of plant growth for most farmers as well as the burning and washing away of farmlands due to intense bush fires and floods adding that “it is quite surprising when we are told that we have an abundance of food”.
A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
