Construction Of 80 Warehouses Completed

Government construction of eighty warehouses with capacity to store up to 80,000 metric tonnes (MT) of food items aimed at ensuring food security in the country have been completed. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo who made this known when delivering his 2022 State of the Nation Address (SONA) at the

Parliament Wednesday 2022 said each warehouse would have the capacity to store up to 1,000 MT of food items will help to safeguard the country’s food security. Government is expected to distribute the management of the 80 warehouses to the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO), Ghana Stock Exchange, private

sector organizations and the sector Ministry for efficient operation.He expressed optimism that the warehouses will address the waste of farm produce and curb food insecurity in the country. The construction of eighty (80) warehouses, with a combined storage capacity of eighty-thousand metric tonnes, (80,000MT),

has been completed, and their entry into the food production chain is offering better protection to the harvests of farmers. There is no doubt that but for the vigorous interventions we have made in agriculture in the past five years, which have made us more self-reliant in our food needs, our country would have been

at much greater risk as the fallout from the dramatic worldwide increases in freight charges hit prices in our markets and on our supermarket shelves, he said. The President continued Mr Speaker, Government is determined to make our country the place where hard work pays with good dividends. We have also made

substantial investments in the agriculture sector, for example, because we recognise this is where a substantial number of our people make a living. The successes of the Programme for Planting for Food and Jobs have transformed the lives of many farmers around the country. I am glad to announce that the Tono

Irrigation Dam has been fully rehabilitated, and is back to life and fully operational, and is serving the needs of many farmers in the areas around the dam. The result of significant investment by my government in the Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project has resulted in the availability of a total of thirteen thousand, on

hundred and ninety (13,190) hectares of additional irrigable land, through the rehabilitation of Tono, Kpong Left Bank and Kpong Irrigation Schemes, for rice and vegetable cultivation. Immediate benefits arising from the scheme include improved rice yields increasing from 4.5 tons per hectare to 5.5 tons per hectare,

leading to increased production and growth in farm incomes. This has benefitted some fourteen thousand, two hundred and sixty four (14,264) smallholder beneficiaries directly, creating some forty thousand (40,000) jobs along several value chain activities generated from the irrigation schemes. In particular, at the Kpong Left Bank Irrigation Project, Government,

through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, has recently engaged nine large scale investors in addition to smallholder farmers at the Kpong Left Bank Irrigation Project (KLBIP) who would be producing rice, maize and vegetables on one thousand, three hundred hectares (1,300ha), using modern production technologies to achieve improved productivity and production, within the next three months.