Government is actively linking farmers to agro-industrial investments to stabilise prices, create jobs, and accelerate Ghana’s journey towards food security, processing and value addition, President John Maham has said.
Delivering the State of the Nation Address to the 9th Parliament last Friday, President Mahama said a major highlight of this effort is a €154 million Italy–Ghana irrigated commercial farming project to establish a 10,000-hectare irrigated model farm to produce rice, maize, soya, and tomatoes.
This intervention according to the President, is strategically designed to fast-track progress towards food security, ensure a reliable supply of raw materials for agro-processing, and reduce the country’s dependence on food imports.
Region-wide agro industrialization
This year, government has planned very elaborate initiatives under the value-addition and agro-industrialisation drive including the quest to establish rice processing facilities in the Upper East Region, poultry feed production facilities in the Ashanti Region, and cashew and onion processing facilities in the Bono East Region.
Already, a 40-tonne-per-day soya processing plant is being established in Northern Ghana to support soybean farmers and reduce feed costs.
The shea industry is also being revived through secured export contracts and measures to protect local raw material supplies.
However, government’s biggest strategy to reduce Ghana’s over US$400 million annual poultry import bill, is to implement a comprehensive poultry farm-to-table project, through production and processing.
President Mahama said 50 anchor and commercial farmers have already been empowered to produce four million birds.
Also, some 500 SMEs are being supported to producing three million birds, through the small-scale (Nkoko Nketenkete) backyard poultry programme, with emphasis on women and youth.
The Programme’s target is to reach 60,000 households. Even before its official launch, figures from the Agriculture Ministry indicated that 720,000 birds were distributed during the pilot phase to 13,000 farmers in 12 districts.
A poultry processing factory is currently under construction in Bechem to support expected production growth.
Ghana’s food processing sector
Food processing in Ghana is a vital, expanding sector focused on adding value to agricultural products like cocoa, cassava, oil palm, shea butter, canned fruits and livestock, including poultry.
Dominated by small-to-medium scale enterprises, the industry is transitioning toward industrialization, though over 80 percent of processed foods are still imported.
Despite a strong government-supported push to reduce reliance on imports and add value to raw materials locally, sector hurdles including low productivity of local raw materials, high operational costs, and inadequate infrastructure still exists.
Source: businesspostonline
