In order to address food insecurity and lower imports, Mahama starts the Feed Ghana Program.
The Feed Ghana Programme, a significant government program, was started by President John Mahama with the goals of increasing food production, lowering the nation’s reliance on imports, and generating employment in industries associated to agriculture.
The President described the Feed Ghana Program’s many components at the official launch on Saturday, April 12, in Techiman, the capital of the Bono East Region. He also mentioned that the program encourages schools, particularly Senior High Schools, to engage in commercial farming.
President Mahama stated during the launch that “Feed Ghana, also known as Yeridua, is a development project to reduce imports from neighbouring countries.” We’ll make investments in urban and peri-urban agriculture as well as controlled environmental farming, which includes the use of greenhouse technologies.
The program’s first section focusses on community and backyard gardens. In order to lower food expenses and promote nutrition, the president urged Ghanaians to cultivate vegetables in their homes.
He declared, “We’re going to garden in our backyard.” Everyone will be urged to own a plot of ground behind or close to their home and cultivate a garden on which to grow pepper, onions, tomatoes, okra, and garden eggs. This is something we have done previously.
He recalled what had happened in Ghana during the Operation Feed Yourself period.
“Those of you who grew up during the Operation Feed Yourself era recall your parents’ backyard gardening days. Therefore, you didn’t always need to visit the market when you went there to pound fufu. Simply enter the garden, pick some nyadua, gather some pepper, onion, and tomato, then proceed to prepare the soup and pound the fufu.
“We’ll promote community gardens to improve household incomes and nutrition,” he continued.
In order to encourage Senior High Schools and other institutions with available land to engage in crop and livestock farming, the Feed Ghana Program’s second component is institutional farming.
In order to lower household food costs and boost self-reliance, President Mahama clarified, “We’re going to encourage not only households and communities to grow vegetables like tomatoes, pepper, and garden eggs, but we’re going to encourage institutions like Senior High Schools with available lands to be supported to venture into crop production and livestock farming.”
“So you’re going to use some of that land for agricultural reasons,” he said, “for all of our schools that have land available. You will cultivate vegetables in their kitchen to enhance the pupils’ meals. You will own sheep, goats, and cows so that you may supply our schoolchildren with meat. This will encourage children to consider agriculture as a potential career path and support the school feeding program.
The President claims that the project has already attracted interest from a number of institutions.
“The National Service Scheme is one of them; they plan to activate their national service farms to get national servicemen involved in farming. The Ghana Prison Service is one of them. The inmates will be used for agricultural production when the Ghana Prison Service activates the prison farms.
Another organisation that collaborates is the National Youth Employment Agency. Many churches, mosques, and faith-based groups have approached us and expressed interest in entering the agricultural and agri-processing industries,” he said.
The Nkukor Kitin Kitin initiative, which aims to revitalise Ghana’s chicken industry, is the third main component of the program.
President Mahama emphasised how urgent it is to cut back on poultry imports. Ghana buys chicken worth about $400 million annually. We must all feel ashamed of this.
The whole chicken value chain will benefit from the Nkukor Kitin Kitin project. “We will support hatcheries, feed mills, veterinary services, and poultry processing centres through our Poultry Farm to Table project, also known as the Nkukor Kitin Kitin program, which will be implemented in partnership with the Poultry Farmers Association.”
“We plan to register 50 anchor farmers this year who will receive assistance in producing four million birds, or 10,000 metric tonnes of chicken,” he stated.
President Mahama also announced the deployment of thousands of agriculture professionals to support all aspects of the Feed Ghana Program. “We signed an MOU to deploy 5,000 agriculture and veterinary graduates to support the institutional program, as vacancies arise, these graduates will be absorbed permanently into the public service, bridging the gap between research and on-farm practice,” he said, adding that a supplemental plan will support 55,000 households nationwide to produce 500 birds.
President Mahama added that in addition to the poultry revitalisation initiative, the Feed Ghana Program encompasses the development of grains and legumes, vegetables, and livestock. According to him, the goals of these initiatives are to increase agricultural output, guarantee food self-sufficiency, and give Ghanaians long-term jobs.
