The Minister for Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku, has said 129 senior high schools are now cultivating farms under the government’s Feed Ghana Project.
Mr Opoku said this in a radio interview with Citi FM on Wednesday [October 1, 2025].
He explained that the initiative had expanded from households and communities to include schools, churches, and public institutions.
“From the beginning of the campaign up to today, we have a record 129 secondary schools participating,” Mr Opoku stated.
He added that the expansion had contributed greatly to the volume of the current harvest.
He said the broad participation, combined with favourable weather this year, had produced a bumper harvest. According to him, food surpluses are being recorded across major production areas, with rice in Bibiani and Asante Akyem and maize and tomatoes in other regions.
The Minister noted that while farm-gate prices had fallen sharply, consumers in urban centres had yet to feel the impact.
He cited maize as an example, pointing out that the price had dropped from about GH¢1,400 per bag last year to between GH¢400 and GH¢500 this season.
He blamed middlemen profiteering and the continued inflow of imports for the high retail prices in the cities.
To deal with the situation, Mr Opoku said the National Food Buffer Stock Company had been directed to increase purchases of surplus produce to stabilise farmer incomes and secure reserves.
He revealed that one commercial farmer had already offered 30,000 tonnes of yellow maize, which he had referred to Buffer Stock for procurement.
Storage, he admitted, remained a challenge. With over 80 per cent of farmers operating on a small scale, most lacked facilities and were compelled to sell immediately after harvest.
He encouraged private investors to venture into commercial storage, citing examples already emerging in the Bono Region.
On imports, Mr Opoku said some traders were still struggling to sell rice brought in during last year’s drought. He insisted that locally grown rice was now cheaper than imported varieties.
“If you choose to buy imported rice, you are creating jobs elsewhere at the expense of your own people,” he remarked, urging Ghanaians to buy local to sustain farmers.
He also pointed to ongoing foreign investment in agriculture, including projects by Italian company Bonifiche Ferraresi (BF) and a US$1.5 billion arrangement with Qatar.
He noted that, unlike in the past, many of these ventures were now aimed at supplying Ghana’s domestic market. He cited the Asantehene’s offer of 10,000 hectares of land to BF for food production in the Ashanti Region as an example.
Mr Opoku said Ghana’s challenge was no longer about producing enough food but about managing surplus, stabilising prices, and building infrastructure for storage and fair distribution.
“We have not developed our agriculture to its fullest,” he said. “But this bumper harvest is a blessing and an opportunity to build lasting systems.”
