Agric minister heartbroken as drought reduces maize yields by 13%
Prolonged water shortage resulted in a 13% dip in the quantity of harvested maize to a national average of 3.8 metric tonnes per hector in 2019 to 3.3 metric tonnes per hector in 2020.
The drought occurred in the country’s main cereal-producing regions, including Afram Plans in the Eastern Region, Kintampo in the Bono East Region, and Ejura Sekyere-Odumasi in the major and minor seasons in the country the Ashanti Region.
“I was a witness to this unfortunate event…the day before the 2020 general elections, I was driving from Kumasi to Ejura-Sekyedumase, on a mission. The shock I received after travelling past Mampong was that both left and right fields were brown. Ordinarily, those should have been green at that time of the year. My heart was broken,” The Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, said at a press briefing.
The minister ascribed the situation to the adverse effects of climate change.
Steps to address the issue
Dr Akoto said the government had taken steps to rehabilitate and construct irrigation facilities to ensure all-year-round farming and promote conservation agriculture among farmers.
The minister said that there had been a reduction of maize importation from 80,000 to 40,000 in 2017 to 80,000 in 2018, and said, “this figure is expected to vanish in the next three years so or if we continue to produce at the rate we are doing.”
He added that the export of maize to neighbouring countries were badly affected.
Planting for Food and Jobs
Regarding the government’s flagship Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme, he stated that the project had seen an expansion in fertiliser and seed distribution to farmers.
According to the minister, trends in major staple crops including maize, rice and soybean have seen a sharp increase from 2017 to 2020 because of the policy, explaining that maize inched up from 485,000 metric tonnes to 2,019,000 metric tonnes in 2020.
Dr Akoto recalled that “only 11% of food crop farmers were using improved seeds. About 15% of farmers used fertilisers at the rate of eight kilograms per hector. ”
He noted that farmers’ use of fertiliser had shot up from 121,000 metric tonnes in 2017 to 423, 473 metric tonnes in 2020 under the PFJ, disclosing that the target for this year was 520,000 metric tonnes.
On the use of certified seeds, he stated that through the initiative, the usage had increased from 4,400 metric tonnes to 29,500 metric tonnes, with a target of pushing it higher to 40,000 metric tonnes.
“Majority of the seeds were locally produced by farmers and certified by the Plant Protection and Regulatory Services Directorate of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. This is very impressive and has saved us a great deal,” he noted.
Dr Akoto stated that to store surplus grains, the government had invested in building 80 warehouses with the capacity of 114,000 metric tonnes nationwide to augment the existing 27 with the capacity of 37,000 metric tonnes.
He added that the government had initiated the necessary steps to establish the Grain Development Authority to manage those facilities.
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