By: Adam Sandow Saani
In Ghana’s breadbasket regions of the North, a quiet catastrophe is unfolding. Against a backdrop of full silos and ripe fields, the farmers who feed the nation are staring at bankruptcy. This isn’t a story of drought or pestilence, but of a market in collapse, a crisis woven from soaring costs, plummeting prices, and policy contradictions that are pushing agriculture to the brink.
The Arithmetic of Despair
In the 2023-2024 farming season, input costs, fertiliser, weedicides, labour, and transport, skyrocketed. In the Northern Region, hiring a combine harvester now costs between GH¢500 and GH¢600 per acre. Yet, the farm-gate price for a 100kg bag of paddy rice hovers between GH¢150 and GH¢300. The math is brutal: the yield from one acre often fails to cover the harvesting cost alone.
Maize sells for roughly GH¢250 per bag. Soya beans, demanding laborious hand-harvesting, fetch only GH¢400. For countless farmers, this season’s ledger shows only loss.
“We are not talking about low profit,” says Adam Sandow Saani, a farmer, Supply Chain Management professional, and lecturer at Tamale Technical University. “We are talking about a direct path into debt. There is no breakeven point in sight.”
A Broken Chain: From Policy to Plate
The crisis exposes critical fractures at every node of Ghana’s food supply chain:
The Squeezed Supplier: The farmer, the primary source, is being financially strangled by costs that outstrip revenue.
The Flawed Demand Signal: The National Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO), established to stabilise prices, has provided inconsistent support. Reports indicate that while it purchases some local grain, institutions like Senior High Schools are being supplied with imported parboiled rice from Burkina Faso. This undercuts a guaranteed market for local producers.
The AfCFTA Paradox: In a stark contradiction, Ghana’s advocacy for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) on continental stages clashes with border policies at home. Previously, traders from Burkina Faso, Togo, and Côte d’Ivoire created competitive regional demand, boosting prices for Ghanaian farmers. The recent closure of borders to this trade has severed that lifeline overnight. “The promise of a 1.3-billion-person market rings hollow for a farmer in Tamale who just lost their buyer from Ouagadougou,” Saani notes.
The Downstream Domino Effect: The crisis propagates. Local rice millers now lack paddy, as market women lose their retail space to cheaper imports. Mills stand idle, jobs vanish, and intermediaries collapse.
The Looming Shadow: A Future of Shortages
Economics is clear: if producers cannot recover costs, production will cease. Many farmers are already making the painful decision to drastically reduce planted acreage next season. Today’s celebrated low consumer prices, analysts warn, are a mirage foreshadowing tomorrow’s severe shortages and price spikes.
A Path Forward: Solutions Grounded in Reality
Stakeholders are calling for urgent, coherent interventions:
1. Transparent, Cost-Based Pricing: The government, through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) and NAFCO, must collaborate with farmer associations to establish a minimum farm-gate price rooted in realistic production costs.
2. Enforced Domestic Procurement: Public institution feeding programs must mandate and audit the sourcing of a significant percentage of staples from local farmers and millers, a non-negotiable step for food sovereignty.
3. AfCFTA-Aligned Border Management: A shift from blanket bans to smart, rules-based trade. Under AfCFTA frameworks, Ghana could establish transparent seasonal quotas or licensing systems in consultation with neighbours, allowing beneficial regional trade to stabilise farmer incomes without jeopardising domestic supply.
4. Midstream Investment: Support for aggregation centres and local millers through affordable credit and technology to build resilient, competitive domestic value chains.
A National Emergency
The plight of Ghana’s farmers is more than an agricultural issue; it is a national emergency with implications for food security, employment, and regional credibility. “We cannot sacrifice food sovereignty and our AfCFTA credibility for short-term political gains,” asserts Saani. “Fair pricing for the farmer is not a handout; it is an investment in national security.”
The call is growing for the government to convene a crisis meeting with genuine farmer representatives, millers, and trade experts to redesign a broken system. The goal: fix the supply chains, patronise what is grown, and engage neighbours with intelligent trade protocols.
As the sun sets over Ghana’s fertile fields, the question remains: Will the nation safeguard those who feed it, or risk a future where there is no food, cheap or otherwise, to price at all?
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About the authour:
Adam Sandow Saani is a farmer, supply chain management professional & assistant lecturer at the Department of Logistics and Procurement Management, Tamale Technical University.
