The Minister in charge of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Bryan Acheampong has revealed that traders plying the Niger route spend $2m in importing onions weekly.
This according to the minister is embarrassing looking at the resources the country possesses.
“I deemed this as an embarrassment and a needless drain on our scarce foreign exchange”.
However, according to the minister, the traders are willing to convert their import trade to local production and trading in the country’s irrigation schemes put up the the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
The minister disclosed this at the launch of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) phase 2 in Tamale.
According to the minister, this should not be the case looking at the amount of resources the country possesses.
He added that, in dealing with the wider potential, PFJ phase 2 has been designed as a bold innovative and comprehensive approach to tackle head on the hurdles of the country’s food security journey.
“The underpinning model which is the input credit system will solve a number of challenges such as quality agro-inputs”, Dr. Acheampong noted.
The PFJ phase 2 is expected to support farmers especially large-scale farmers in terms of land development in order for large scales to aid the exportation of produce to generate income.
Dr. Acheampong also emphasized that, with PFJ 2.0 all that the farmer needs is access to land and all other things shall be added.
The impact of the PFJ phase 2 is expected to be in the area of job creation with 1.2 million farmers to be enrolled in the first year.
In the next four (4) years, the Programme is destined to record an annual average of two hundred and ten thousand (210,000) new farm-related jobs.
This will exclude other jobs along the agricultural value chains estimated at an annual average of four hundred and twenty thousand over the same period.
