Cries are rising from villages and farm fields across Ghana.
They are not the cries about drought.
They are not the cries about pests.
They are not even the cries about poor yields.
They are the cries about success betrayed, and abundance spurned.
Our farmers have done their part.
The rains came.
The seeds responded.
The soil yielded its increase.
From the maize belts of the north to the rice lands, from cassava farms in the middle belt to yams and tomatoes in the savannah, from plantain and cocoyam fields in the forest zones, Ghana produced abundance.
And yet that abundance has turned into anguish and pain.
Food is rotting. Prices have collapsed.
Farmers cannot find buyers.
The bumper harvest that should have been a national celebration has become a national embarrassment.
When a farmer harvests and cannot sell, the republic has failed him.
No justification
A nation that imports rice, tomato, onions, and many of its staples cannot morally justify watching its own produce go to waste.
A government that speaks of food security cannot remain comfortable when surplus food does not translate into farmer prosperity.
The tragedy before us is not agricultural. Rather, it is institutional.
Neither is it a production crisis. It is a market failure.
India faced this dilemma decades ago. Ethiopia confronted it in its own way.
They understood something fundamental: agriculture does not transform an economy merely by increasing yields. It transforms an economy when the state builds the architecture that connects production to predictable markets.
Ghana does not lack inspired farmers.
What we lack is a serious food system.
Emergency buying
We already have the National Food Buffer Stock Company. But NAFCO must evolve from an emergency buyer into a disciplined, rules-based national market-maker like the Ghana Food Distribution Corporation in General Acheampong’s administration in the 1970s. It must not be a political intervention tool that appears only when headlines scream.
It must become a permanent stabilising institution with transparent price triggers, defined purchase caps, professional warehousing, and clear distribution channels.
If farmgate prices crash below a defined price band, the state steps in — not sentimentally or arbitrarily, but systematically.
That is how you protect dignity without distorting markets.
But buying alone is not enough. If we simply purchase and pile maize in warehouses that leak and rot, we will convert food into fiscal waste.
Stabilisation without infrastructure becomes ineptitude.
True reform lies in opening export channels and building a national warehouse receipt and grading system.
When a farmer deposits maize, rice or beans in a certified warehouse, the crop must be weighed, graded and recorded.
A receipt is issued — not a piece of paper, but a bankable instrument.
That receipt becomes collateral.
The farmer can borrow against it instead of engaging in distress sales.
Prices stabilise not because the government decrees it, but because the system works.
This is how Ethiopia modernised agricultural trade, and this is how serious economies turn crops into assets.
Now consider cassava. You cannot store cassava for long.
Cassava demands processing into high-quality cassava flour for bakeries, Industrial starch, ethanol, gari and delicious kokontey.
If cassava rots, it is not because farmers produced too much.
It is because there are no facilities to process them.
Tomatoes tell the same story.
Every year, we watch fresh tomatoes flood markets and collapse in price, while imported tomato paste lines supermarket shelves.
That contradiction is policy incoherence.
Guaranteed support prices
Without guaranteed support prices, cold storage chain, functional processing plants and disciplined trade management during harvest peaks, we will continue to humiliate our farmers while exporting our foreign exchange and lamenting about weak fundamentals.
Yams and plantains require aggregation, logistics, and export-grade handling systems.
They require packhouses, transport networks and coordinated buyers.
Their problem is not yield. Their problem is organisation.
What the farmer at Mmaa Mpe Hia needs is not charity.
She needs predictability.
She needs a republic that says: If you produce, we will ensure the market system exists for your produce to move.
The state must hardwire demand in the form of a permanent structural and legal framework to guarantee that agricultural produce is purchased rather than relying solely on fluctuating market demand.
Statecraft
Schools, hospitals, prisons, the military and social protection programmes are not minor consumers.
They are anchors of stable demand. A disciplined procurement policy that prioritises structured domestic supply chains can transform gluts into guaranteed offtake.
This is not socialism. It is statecraft.
A bumper harvest should never be allowed to be a national nightmare. It must become the ignition switch for farmers’ prosperity and rural industrialisation.
If we fail to act decisively, farmers will rationally reduce production next season. Then scarcity returns. Prices spike. Imports rise, and the cycle repeats.
We will move from glut to shortage to import dependence — all the while claiming to pursue food security.
The transformation we seek cannot be built on speeches alone. It requires institutional courage.
That is why NAFCO needs to be upgraded into a professional, rules-based food supply stabiliser.
Investment
We must invest massively in storage and grading infrastructure, and launch a warehouse receipt system that makes crops bankable.
We need to accelerate agro-processing clusters by crop type, like the Indian One District One Product (ODOP) initiative.
We need to incentivise processing facilities around them, like the Ethiopian Integrated Agro Industrial Parks ( IAIP) approach.
And then align market policy with harvest seasons, mandating public institutions to source locally through structured channels.
Then let the message ring across the countryside: in this republic, your harvest has value.
A nation that cannot protect the dignity of its farmers cannot claim economic sovereignty.
However, a nation that builds a food system worthy of its soil will not only feed itself, it will also industrialise from the ground up.
Abundance is knocking at our door. Will we build the institutions to receive it?
The writer is a Development Policy Advocate
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Source:
www.graphic.com.gh
