The Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto says the government’s flagship planting for food and jobs programme has been successful.
The Minister insists that the programme has been extremely successful, despite assessments by some groups and institutions that the outcomes have been subpar.
“Planting for Food and Jobs has been extremely successful. It has changed the attitude of people of Ghana towards agriculture. The youth and a lot of businesspeople and middle-class people are now going into agriculture and with that, I have achieved my objective of demonstrating that it is not just villagers or illiterates that do agriculture,” he said.
The Minister was speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Wednesday, March 16, 2022.
Reacting to concerns that food prices have been very high and was contributing to the high cost of living in Ghana, he blamed fuel prices and transportation costs.
“Food is bulky. It has so many components and let’s say high transportation cost. So if anything happens on the world market to oil prices, you have a hit on food prices. Same applies to chemical inputs. These are not just for food, but it is for everything. [The current challenges] are not just in Ghana. It is a global phenomenon. That doesn’t mean that our programme is not successful,” he said.