By Napoleon Ato Kittoe
Ghana may have itself to blame for high food prices in the face of abundance of farm produce.
Well, when this issue comes up, the blame is transferred to the difficulty in carting farm produce from farm gates in the hinterlands to the cities. Whilst prices in the rural areas are a bit affordable, that reality is fast eroding due to inclination of rural folks to raise prices to occupants of private cars which stop by them to buy.
The optics found in this story are the yam bumper harvests in Ghana’s Oti region. The produce exceeds demand in the locality and is unstoppably itching for other market outlets.
That brings the farm warehouse and food produce preservation concepts to the fore, both initiatives by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, MoFA, and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR. Importantly, the latter has the capacity for putting yam to other uses if the Council’s innovativeness is at full play.
Agro and cottage industries in rural Ghana, dovetailed by intentional domestic consumption will do Ghana a lot of good, including boosting incomes of producers of non-cash crops, creation of jobs, and conserving foreign exchange.
