The Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has Ghanaians that the Ministry will make the country self-sufficient in rice production within the next two years.
According to the sector Minister, the government had invested in combine harvesters and other farming implements, and brought in four different types of solar-powered milling machines from China to improve upon production.
He gave this assurance during an interaction with farmer groups and value chain operators while on a tour of the agricultural sector in the Bono, Bono East regions.
Dr. Akoto visited some farms in the two regions during a four-day tour to get first-hand information on the state of the sector as the farming season has begun.
The Minister met with all the regional and district directors of agriculture in the regions, actors in the agricultural value chain such as market women, input dealers, tractor operators and agro-food processors to discover their major challenges and what the government could do to help them.
Dr Akoto observed that the major challenges faced by the farmers had to do with the absence of the needed machinery to enable them to expand their farms, harvest on time, mill the paddy rice, store their crops, and how to find markets.
He said his ministry acknowledges the concerns and challenges of the farmers which are being addressed, as it had taken delivery of 1,000 hand-held farming implements for distribution to farmers throughout the country.
He clarified that the tools were procured with a Brazilian facility to address the challenges facing farmers by easing the drudgery of manual farming.
Additionally, the solar-powered milling machines have been positioned in four different locations on a pilot basis, and when proved to be effective and efficient, would be followed with over 1,000 of such machines throughout the country where they were most needed.
Dr Akoto also observed that even though the total demand for rice stood at 1.2 million metric tonnes annually, however, the milling capacity of rice in the country was 400,000 metric tonnes.
He said until 2017, the country’s milling capacity was below 150,000 metric tonnes, which caused the huge level of rice importation into the country, which he described as “unnecessary and unwarranted.”
The Minister indicated that the introduction of the Planting for Food and Jobs initiative had boosted rice production from 138,000 metric tonnes in 2016 to 665,000 in 2019.
He further projected that by 2023, the country would have reached self-sufficiency with about 29,000 metric tonnes as surplus.
CHICKEN IMPORTATION TO END BY 2023
Dr. Afriyie Akoto said the government was determined to make Ghana self-sufficient in chicken products by 2023 and curtail the huge sums of money spent annually on importation.
“Ghana spends $350 million every year importing poultry. If the farmers at Dormaa are well resourced, I’m confident that you can feed the whole of West Africa and beyond… But we have to get our diagnostics right.”
Dr. Afriyie Akoto attributed the dwindling poultry industry over the years to the non-availability of soya beans, which is a major component of poultry feed, adding that this explains why Soya was added to the first six foodstuffs selected under the Planting for Food and Agriculture programme.
Addressing poultry farmers in Dormaa Ahenkro, Dr Akoto assured the people that steps would be taken to complete a poultry laboratory project which was started during the Kufuor-led New Patriotic party (NPP) administration, but abandoned by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government, saying, “without animal health your industry is dead, and I’m the first person to appreciate that, so I can promise you that I’m going to pursue the matter.”
1D1F PROJECTS
The Minister inspected some projects, including a $16 million poultry processing factory being put up at Tanoso in the Tano North District of the Ahafo Region by Tyco City Investment Limited under the One-District, One-Factory initiative, and GKA Foods located at Abesim near Sunyani.
He also visited the Weddi Africa Tomato Processing Factory at Jinijini in the Berekum West District, which is also being executed under One-District, One-factory programme. The factory, which is expected to start production by the close of the year, would initially employ about 350 people directly, while several thousands of indirect jobs would also be created along its production and marketing chain.
The post Ghana to be self-sufficient in rice production in two years appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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