A former Research Scientist with the Savannah Agricultural Research Institute (SARI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Professor Roger Kanton, has described the Ministry of Food and Agriculture's plan to cart food products from rural areas and sell at the Ministry in Accra as bizarre.
The Minister for Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has indicated that the Ministry will transport food from the rural areas to Accra in a bid to deal with rising food inflation.
This according to the Minister will reduce the costs within the value chain.
“Prices in urban areas, particularly in Accra, are a far cry from what pertains in production centers in the regions…Government and the Ministry are arranging to transport food from the production centers directly to Accra to provide food at reasonable prices.”
Professor Kanton questioned the capacity of the sector in transporting food and further indicated that the agricultural value chain does not allow one actor to act in place of another.
READ ALSO: Food prices soaring amid high import reliance - IMF
“There is a whole organization that is tasked to take off excess food from farmers and that is the buffer stock, my question is how well they have functioned. They keep saying that there is enough food, then they should deploy people from buffer stock, why is he using his scanty resources as the technical ministry to wade into an area that they don’t have the competence…I find it to be a little bit bizarre.”