The Minister in Charge of the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation (MESTI), Dr. Kwaku Afriyie, has revealed that Ghana can solve its economic problems with improved food production alone.
According to him, the nation currently imports $3.5 billion of food into the country, so “if we adopt import substitution as applied to food alone, Ghana can save more than $2 billion.
Speaking at the 3rd edition of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Food Fair 2023 to commemorate the International Food Day celebration in Ghana, Dr. Afriyie said, “If I tell you the sort of things, we spend hard-earned money to import, and coincidentally, I’m so afraid that amount equals the foreign exchange we get from cocoa of $2.2 billion.
“We waste that money importing frivolous things which are Agricultural related such as the tallies and what not hitherto we can easily produce locally and substitute for.”
“There is one thing, we have to train our falconry nerves thus our sense of taste and smile for locally produced food which are nutritionally superior to those that are imported.
He added that lots of the rice that is imported into Ghana has been sitting in silos for the past ten years, losing its nutritional value, yet “we reject our local produce.”
“If our people would be taught to accept local produce and quickly embrace that, IMF would be redundant and would be absolutely unnecessarily,” he stated.
He revealed that research has shown that Africa has 60% of the arable land in the world. Europe has exhausted its lands, with America left with some reserves, but Africa has 60%, “so we have what it is to solve our own problems.”
“If we adopt the system of producing to feed our own selves then we can use Agriculture to earn the dollars.”
The Minister who also doubles as Member of Parliament for Sefwi Wiawso in the Western North Region challenged the directors of the 13 departments of CSIR to extend the yearly Food Fair celebration beyond the confined of the institute to draw attention to Ghanaians.
The board chairman of the CSIR, Nana Osei Bonsu, challenged the government to improve upon its effort to improve food security since it has the potential to destabilize the country.
Nana Bonsu employs the government of Ghana to focus on the issue of market accessibility, address challenges of lack of storage facilities and adding value to Agric products.
“I want to appeal to the government to relook at food production by providing the needed resources to be able to produce what we eat to cut the burden of food import which is increasing becoming dangerous,” he stated.
On his part, the Director General of CSIR, Professor Paul Bonsu, speaking on this year’s theme; ‘Transforming Food Systems for Nutrition, Health, Wealth and Sustainability, leave no One Behind,’ said the day is marked as an important day in the calendar of CSIR because it is seen as a social obligation to make Ghanaians remember the role that safe nutrition plays in human existence.
Prof Bonsu again said the day is also used to engage policy makers to enhance food security through trade, information sharing and dialogue.
“As a nation, we have to continue our effort of transforming the food systems if we have to achieve the Zero hunger target by 2030,” he stated.
However, he said despite the government effort to complement the global trend, through ‘Operation Feed Yourselves’ to the current ‘Planting for Food and Jobs Phase II policies, children’s statistics globally in relation to hunger are not encouraging.
In 2022, 45 million children under aged five globally suffers from waisting,148 million had stunted growth and 37 million were overweight.
