Ghanaians might experience severe famine if the sale of farmlands to real estate developers goes unregulated, a Senior Policy Advisor of the USAID Agricultural Policy Support Project, Mr Kwaku Owusu-Baah has warned.
He told the Graphic that the country faces danger as far as food production is concerned.
“A few years ago, peri-urban farming provided enough vegetables to feed Accra, but today we import vegetables from Burkina Faso. It is a challenge we need to look at and deal with before it gets out of hand,” he said.
He therefore called on Parliament to take immediate steps to address the challenge.
He made the appeal at a two-day training programming which gathered participants from more than 20 media houses and agriculture-focused civil society organisations together.
Signs of the country’s dependency on its neighbours for food imports were on the wall during last year’s Burkina Faso political crisis when some analysts warned of a potential food security crisis in Ghana, should the conflict escalate.
As of 2009, Ghana’s tomatoes imports from Burkina Faso stood at 180,000 tonnes. The country’s import bill from onions from Burkina Faso and Niger also stood at $5 million.
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By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana