Interview: Ghana targets 1.2 mln tons of rice production in 5 years
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E-mail Xinhua, January 24, 2013
Ghana aims to produce 1.2 million metric tons of rice within the next five years to significantly reduce its import, an industry player said here Wednesday.
"If we can train more of our farmers within the next three to five years and they can produce to yield at least six tons, that will be about 1.2 million metric tons of rice paddy, enough to cancel out imports," Paa Kwesi Forson, executive secretary of the Ghana Rice Inter-Professional Body (GRIB), told Xinhua in an interview.
Ghana has made major improvements in local rice production, both in quantity and quality, over the years.
The country made remarkable progress, though at a slow pace, particularly in the production of the cereal which has seen consistent increases from 249,999 metric tons in 2006 to 491,603 metric tons in 2010, according to the GRIB.
Ghana imported 311.513 million U. S. dollars worth of rice in 2001, but consumption reduced to 200.88 million dollars in 2010, according to figures from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA).
The country now accounts for 45 percent of its domestic rice requirement, leaving a short fall of 55 percent. This has led to calls on the Ghanaian government to set high import taxes on rice to encourage investments in the local rice sector.
Experts say Ghana has great potential to expand its present average rice production area of over 125,000 hectares (ha) by 200 percent if the vast area of inland valleys and swamps is fully exploited.
However, there have been persistent challenges in dealing with the processing, marketing and branding of locally produced rice and the acquired taste for foreign rice which, if not stymied, could lead to the collapse of the local rice industry.
Other challenges are lack of access to credit, equipment for production and processing, dependence on rainfall for farming, post-harvest losses, and low productivity, as well as stiff competition from imported rice.
But Forson ays, GRIB, as a value chain inter-professional body, believes that local rice is nutritious and has all the attributes of imported rice.
Stakeholders in the industry are therefore strategizing to address these challenges to make Ghana self-sufficient in rice production.
Forson has therefore stressed the need for urgent interventions in the rice industry to ensure proper post-harvest handling and marketing, and better packaging to ensure that local rice competed favorably with imported ones on the market.
"GRIB is therefore going to work with rice stakeholders, MoFA and the relevant institutions to come out with industry standards that are going to be used to regulate the quality of the product and promote a sustainable image for 'good quality made-in-Ghana rice'," he told Xinhua.
He called on the Ghanaian government to build the capacity of the private sector to grow stronger to become the backbone for the sector.
"Why would somebody use his land for farming when he could as well use it to build houses and rent? Why would somebody spend his money to deliver services in agriculture when he can go and deliver services in oil and gas and make money?" he quipped.
"So, at the end of the day, you have to make the sector competitive and interesting. You have to make it look good so that people will like to invest their money in the sector. If you build a strong private sector-led organization as the backbone of the industry, everything else will fall into place," he added.
Rice has become the second most important food after maize in Ghana and its consumption keeps increasing as a result of population growth, urbanization and change in consumer habits.
It contributes nine percent of the food requirements of the country and has been expressly identified in Ghana's Food and Agricultural Sector Development Policy (FASDEP) as an important food crop that should be given special attention for food self- sufficiency.
The project is expected to support lowland rice production of up to 6,000 hectares in the Northern, Upper East, Upper West Regions and northern parts of the Volta Region of Ghana.
Ghana has instituted a Rice Development Fund to help cater for high cost investments such as irrigation, land preparation, and equipment financing, among others. Endi
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