Peasant farmers gathered at a stakeholder engagement workshop at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Policy Institute in Accra to discuss strategies for safeguarding the nation’s food supply.
The sensitisation and awareness workshop drew together civil society organisations, policymakers, and community representatives to adopt the new 10-year Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) framework, dubbed the “Kampala Declaration and Economic Community of West Africa Agricultural Policy (ECOWAP).”
Speaking at the event, the Minister for Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku, outlined the government interventions aimed at improving irrigation to strengthen food security.
“Without irrigation, it will be difficult for Ghana to have food security. And so, as part of the measures under the Feed Ghana program to boost food production, ensure food security, and engender economic transformation, we want to provide irrigation to cover a land area of 100 hectares and allocate the land to the farmers for them to produce food all year round to support processing and the 24-hour economy. So now, we are rehabilitating existing irrigation infrastructure, including Ashaiman, Aveyime, Wheta, Via, and several others across the country,” he said.
He also promised the construction of new irrigation systems in the coming weeks.
“We are also constructing new ones. In fact, in the coming weeks, I will be in the Ashanti Region to cut sod for the commencement of irrigation development in Enumso, Wemu, and several other communities around that enclave.”
President of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, Wepia Addo Awal, said the association will closely monitor government plans to ensure they benefit its members.
“We are very happy with what he has said. The only thing, like I said, is that once we are on the ground, we’ll monitor to see, and we expect to see that on time because the farmers are ready to go into production to support government to increase food supply in this country,” he explained.
He also explained how the dropping rate of inflation will positively impact food production.
“If you look at inflation coming down, the component of food inflation is what is driving the general inflation down, and we have stated time without number that if the Minister of Finance, as he has indicated time and again, wants to bring inflation to a single digit, this can only be done with greater investment in agriculture for us to produce more and stabilize food prices so that government can achieve single-digit inflation going forward.”
Through the Feed Ghana Programme, government aims to leverage agriculture as a key driver for economic transformation and food security.