Minister hints of 4 poultry feed processing factories

The Food and Agriculture Minister, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has assured Ghanaian poultry farmers of government’s intentions to increase maize and soya production this year, to make them competitive and further help cut down the importation of chicken.

Given that, he said, the ministry is collaborating with some four private investors to soon establish poultry feed processing factories in the country.

The move follows recent complaints by poultry farmers that the huge volumes of imported chicken are having adverse effects on the ailing sector. He indicated that since the early 2000s, Ghana's poultry sector has been experiencing a steep decline, and the ill-fortunes of the sector have been largely attributed to the importation of frozen chicken, which is affecting the competitiveness of the sector.

Successive governments, he bemoaned, have tried to support both the livestock sector and poultry, to enable them to impact meaningfully on economic development, but this is yet to be achieved. He was speaking at the Ghana-Israel Agriculture Technology breakfast dialogue in Accra.

The dialogue was led by Oded Halamit, a special guest from Israel’s Centre for International Agriculture Development Co-operation (CINADCO), under Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The event was a precursor to the 20th International Agricultural Exhibition and Conference, AgriTech Israel 2018, which will be held in Tel-Aviv from May 8-10, 2018, under the theme ‘Agriculture in arid and semi-arid region’. This year, the AgriTech conference focuses on the unique challenges faced in the light of global warming, climate change, water scarcity and other factors.

Halamit urged Ghanaian farmers who were present at the dialogue to adopt more modern technologies to boost food production in the country. He said the use of modern technologies would go a long way to even attract the youth into the agricultural sector, since most of them were very uncomfortable with the traditional ways.

Israeli Ambassador to Ghana, Ami Mehl said the dialogue was to promote business between Ghana and Israel. “We want to promote economic relations between Ghana and Israel. Both countries are not enjoying each other the way they ought to, and we are working very hard to derive the enormous benefits from each country,” he stated.

He says AgriTech hosts about 10,000 visitors due to the groundbreaking innovative nature of Israeli agriculture. With the world’s population expected to grow from seven billion to nine billion by 2050, he said, there was the need to improved agricultural productivity on the globe.

The AgriTech exhibition and conference is one of the world’s most important exhibitions in the field of agricultural technologies, and is held in Israel every three years.