Safeguarding Food Security - the Way Forward

Many poor, food-importing countries around the world, including Ghana have become desperate in recent months, as global prices of rice, wheat, and maize have doubled. Hundreds of millions of poor people, who already spend a large share of their daily budget on food, are being pushed to the edge.

The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.

In Ghana, an estimated 5.6 million are small food farmers, but farming is the least respected in Ghana. History has shown that government action is required to help the poor farmers escape the low-yield poverty trap. If farmers can be helped to obtain simple technologies, income can rise, and they can accumulate bank balances and collateral. With a bit of temporary help, perhaps lasting around five years, farmers can build up enough wealth to obtain inputs on a market basis, either through direct purchases from savings or through bank loans.

In the midst of soaring prices, many people in Ghana are now finding it hard to have a decent meal a day, a direct failure by the State to ensure the basic right to food. There is no doubt that without food, human beings cannot survive, let alone fighting for the other rights. For us in Ghana, the underlying cause of the current food crisis is the implementation of the Structural Adjustment Programme, which forced government to remove subsidies on agricultural inputs, whereas the very countries that made the prescriptions subsidised and continue to subsidise their farmers.

Poultry farmers, for instance have hinted that far from the official notion that all is well, there is a looming grain crisis, due to shortage of grain and the increasing demand for it to feed the poultry industry. It is regrettable that banks are refusing poultry farmers loans to clear tons of yellow maize imported by Unique Logistics to feed their farms, in order to reduce the pressure on white maize used for banku and kenkey. If poultry and human beans are left to compete for the few maize available, then surely, no one can rule out the possibility of maize shortage next year.

The time has come to reestablish public financing systems that enable small farmers in Ghana to gain access to needed inputs of high-yield seeds, fertilizer, and small-scale irrigation. The current high prices of food had long been foretold by civil society advocacy groups and if the government had heeded their advice and started measures to boost local production, Ghana would not be reduced to a net importer.