Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto in a chat with Mr. Frank Braeken, AGRA Board Member after the launch.
About 1.2 billion Ghana cedis have been generated at the farm gates in less than two years of the implementation of government’s ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ (PFJ) initiative.
Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto who announced this during the launch of the 2019 Alliance for A Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) conference, in Accra, said government invested 450 million Ghana cedis in the initiative which is already surpassing the revenue generation target.
“It really shows that it is worth investing in small holder farms with the right technologies,” he said.
The sector Minister further noted that apart from the project gaining revenue for farmers, consumers were also benefiting from the low cost of food produce in the country recently.
“It’s a fact, there is nobody in Ghana today whose food budget has not been affected unless the person doesn’t want to tell the truth and its from East to North to West to wherever,” he stressed.
He debunked the argument people make that because the prices of foods are down farmers have lost. “The increases in volume compared to the decline in farm made price, you cannot even begin to compare. Their gross income has shot up accordingly, so everybody wins,” Dr. Afriyie stated.
He added that this was evident in the country’s consumer price index which is around 9.3 per cent adding, “We are projecting that it would be below 9% by the end of December.”
Dr. Akoto further indicated that the approach which has worked for government was to focus on the biological solution which was the provision of fertilizers and seedling before the engineering which was the huge equipments like tractors.
He again indicated that government was constructing 80 warehouses across the country with a capacity of 1000 metric tons each in anticipation of the bumper harvest. The warehouses he said will be completed by August this year to store the excess food that would be produced.
“I am telling you what we’ve seen last year would be nothing compared to what we would see in 2019, believe me, we going to have a huge harvest.
So we are living through very exciting times and the government of Akufo-Addo is very determined that this is going to carry on if its to the last cedi of the Ghanaian tax payer we are going to use it to support such a program because through that we transform the lives of millions and millions and millions and make the economy very string.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri & Elizabeth Boateng