The Government of Ghana has been told to immediately institute measures to forestall food crisis from occurring in the country.
Private legal practitioner, Mr Kwame Jantuah said it is unthinkable that Ghana is experiencing high prices of tomatoes whereas the produce can be cultivated in the country in large supplies and sold at less cost to feed the population.
He explained that the political challenges in Burkina Faso is affecting the supply of tomatoes to Ghana, hence leading to shortage of the commodities.
This, in his view, would not be happening if Ghana were to be producing tomatoes on a large scale.
Speaking on the New Day show on TV3 with Berla Mundi on Friday May 20, he said “we are sitting by water but we are using spit to wash our face. Why are we having problems with tomatoes in this country the mian ingredeint of food? Because of the challenges in Burkina Faso. We have land and we are not growing.
“We are going into food crisis and nobody is saying Ghanaians, is high time you started growing food in your onw homes. Because of the challenges in Burkina Faso the prices of tomatoes had gone up, how can we be sitting by water and be using spit to wash our face? wouldn’t it be nice of the Agriculture Minister came and said look the way we are going, in the next couple of years it is going to be very challenging , we are bringing in a policy for everybody to have a small garden in their homes.”
On the issue of food shortage, the General Secretary of the Ghana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU), Mr Edward Kareweh, last week told Ghanaians to prepare for hunger this year if immediate steps are not taken by the government to invest in the agriculture sector of the economy.
In his view, there is a deliberate attempt to reduce agriculture output in Ghana due to the low investments in the sector.
Contributing to a discussion on the impact of the ongoing geopolitical tension between Russia and Ukraine on food supply in Ghana, Mr Kareweh said on TV3’s New day show with Johnnie Hughes on Monday May 16 that “As we speak, the food you are eating was not produced in 2022. There will be hunger, already there is hunger and the hunger will be more because I don’t foresee government getting money to support farmers to produce.”
He added “there is deliberate policy to reduce out put. When you refuse to invest what are you doing?”
He further said that Ghana does not have enough food available to feed the people for even one month without importing more food commodities.
The reality is that a lot of food items are imported into the country therefore, when upheavals and other economic challenges occur in those countries, automatically they become Ghana’s issues, Mr Kareweh added.
“The realty is that we do not have enough food in this country. The reality is that we import so much into this country. So if there is a problem in those country you import those problems,” he said.