Ban on grains export disadvantage to farmers — Soya Value Chain Association
The Soya Value Chain Association of Ghana has described the Ministry of Food and Agriculture’s recent decision to ban the export of grains from the country as “uncalled for”, saying it would go against the very interest of many poor farmers.
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It said there was already a restriction mechanism on grain export in place and, therefore, the decision to initiate another ban on grain export would not solve grain scarcity but disadvantage farmers.
“This ban that has been announced is now going to give an upper hand to grain buyers who can tell farmers they cannot buy their grains at good prices in order to earn good income; yet still, exportation will go on because the ban is a restriction,” the association said at a press conference.
Addressing the press yesterday, the Executive Secretary of the Soya Value Chain Association of Ghana, Yaw Afrifa, therefore, urged the government to include its members on the Export Restriction and Control Committee for a more effective and efficient implementation, as well as bring some transparency.
“We believe that if members of the Soya Value Chain Association were on that committee or the government was consulting us enough, the recent decision to ban grains export would have been unnecessary,” he said.
Farmers shortchanged
Mr Afrifa said prior to the introduction of a legal instrument (L.I. 2432) to ban grain export, the association started pushing for control of the exportation of grains in 2019.
By 2020, he said the government introduced L.I. 2432 to restrict the exportation of soya from Ghana. Before 2019, he said a 100kg bag of soya was around GH₵150.
During the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, some investors turned their attention to Ghana where they could get organic soya, which had premier prices on the international market, the same 100kg bag of soya jumped to GH₵600 and GH₵700.
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“This became a challenge to the industry because the local processors who were buying soya at GH₵150 for 100kg to process crude oil and soya milk for the animal sector were totally put out of the market.
“This affected the poultry industry and we realised that there was a huge cry over the prices of eggs and chicken between 2020 and 2021, with the poultry industry on the verge of collapse due to inadequate soya for processing,” he said.
Mr Afrifa said the association was, therefore, calling on the government to control the exportation of soya, a move that saw the government responding with the introduction of the Soya Export Restriction Committee.
“When the committee was established, we realised that the committee we called for did not have any of our membership on it, so we were insistent, and two members of the association, including its chairman, were made non-voting members on the committee,” he said.
That notwithstanding, Mr Afrifa said the association realised that in 2023 the Soya Export Restriction Committee was converted into a Grain Export Control Committee, “diluting the system and taking it totally from our hands”.
Potential of soya
With the huge potential of soya for the economy, Mr Afrifa also called on the government to establish a National Development Plan for soya as done for the cocoa sector.
Such a move, he said, would bolster the growth of soya bean production, which was capable of overtaking cocoa and gold as the major foreign exchange earner for Ghana.
He explained that currently there were reports of soya oil being used in the United States of America to gas vehicles.
“If this is true, then we see the potency of soya to the Ghanaian economy because all the challenges we are having with forex by importing crude oil will be resolved,” he said.