Closing food security gap in Ghana

Ghana faces some challenges when it comes to agriculture, and food security at large. The food crop sector of Ghana's agriculture is rain fed, except for vegetables that is mostly irrigated. Low farm sizes dominates the stretches of farm land, usually on household subsistence basis. There is low shelve life for the harvested produce due to low technology for processing and storage. The food crop sector is further challenged by low investment as government and individuals focus more attention on cocoa and other horticultural crops like palm and citrus. The poorly developed nature of Ghana's internal food market cannot be over looked since it dictates the efficiency of the food supply chain. At policy level, government policy on agriculture is not well understood by farmers, making implementation very difficult.

What we have in Ghana is a scattered unregistered small holder subsistence farmers with little or no power to increase their farm size, their yield and their income. There are relatively larger farms though but most of those are into plantation cash crops such as cocoa, citrus or palm. This has over the years impeded food security in the country as food crop yield have generally being low because individual farmers are not in a position to attract investment enough to expand their farms and increase yield. And so, to tackle this soaring problem of food insecurity in an increasing population like ours, farmers must first be empowered through farmer base groups.

The perishable nature of agricultural products makes it practically impossible to keep fresh food crops for a long time. And so, even though the country most at times registers bumper harvest, many people do not have food available all year round.

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