Glut at the farmgate, pain in the market: Why Ghana’s food system is failing

Ghana today stands at the centre of a strange and painful contradiction, one that exposes deep structural weaknesses in the nation’s food economy: the country is experiencing one of the largest food surpluses in its modern history while retail food prices remain stubbornly high.

Across the northern grain belt—from Sissala East to Wa East—farms and roadside warehouses are overflowing with maize and paddy rice. In Navrongo and Walewale, farmers have stacked paddy along the shoulders of highways because warehouses are full and mills have shut down due to lack of capital.

In Greater Accra’s poultry enclaves, tens of thousands of egg crates are spoiling in the afternoon heat because traders refuse to buy them, even at near-giveaway prices. Yet in Accra, Kumasi, Takoradi, and Tamale, consumers continue to pay some of the highest food prices recorded in recent years.

Maize meal still sells for between GH¢11.40 and GH¢30.90 per kilogram; local rice remains more expensive at the retail end than it is at the farmgate; and eggs in urban markets cost nearly twice what farmers are begging traders to pay.

The human stories behind this contradiction are sobering. In the Upper West Region, maize farmers say they have never seen such volumes produced—or such catastrophic inability to sell it.

The price of a 100-kilogram bag of maize collapsed from GH¢500 last year to GH¢200 this season, a 60 percent crash. Yet even at GH¢200, traders are not buying because they cannot move the grain profitably.

So the maize sits in makeshift warehouses or under tarpaulins, degrading with every passing week. Rice producers across Upper East, North East, and Northern Region tell similar stories. The three regions together produced nearly one million tonnes of paddy rice in 2024 and 2025, according to multiple farmer associations and field verifications.

But because the mills in the north cannot process these volumes, and because aggregators lack capital after years of thin margins, the paddy remains stranded. Rice harvesters who were supposed to be paid in cash were instead compensated with bags of paddy rice because farmers had no money.

Many of these bags are now lined along major highways, exposed to dust, moisture, and spoilage—and yet Ghana continues to import rice from Asia at commercial scale.

The egg sector reveals an equally painful dimension. Greater Accra’s poultry farmers report more than 38,000 crates of eggs unsold, with many already rotting. Farmgate prices have crashed to GH¢40–45 per crate, but retailers continue selling at GH¢70–75. This extraordinary disparity reflects a systemic pattern: markets with concentrated trader networks maintain high retail prices even when farmers are forced to dump produce.

The real puzzle is why this happens. Why does Ghana have so much food, yet food remains expensive? The explanation lies not in the farms but in the system that connects or fails to connect farms to consumers.

Ghana’s food system is structurally incapable of absorbing large harvests. Transport costs alone often exceed the value of the food being transported. When maize sells at GH¢2 per kilogram at the farmgate, but the cost of moving it to Accra adds GH¢5.50 in transport and losses, plus handling and margins, the final retail price naturally climbs to GH¢11–30.

Even if farmers sold maize for free, it would still be expensive in the city because the logistics system is inefficient, under-coordinated, and heavily exposed to fuel price fluctuations.

The same logistical and infrastructural weaknesses plague the rice sector. Milling capacity in the northern corridor is not only insufficient but also financially fragile.

Many mills operate far below capacity or sit idle entirely because they cannot access capital to buy paddy, and farmers cannot afford to wait months to be paid. Storage infrastructure is equally inadequate.

National Food Buffer Stock Company warehouses were able to mop up only 60,000 bags of rice and 120,000 bags of maize during the crisis—less than 10 percent of the stranded food. Most farmers report that buffer stock officials told them there was no room left to store new purchases, even after emergency purchases were announced.

This mismatch between production and absorption capacity becomes clearer when viewed through a simple table comparing northern rice output to the volume actually purchased.

This means nearly ninety percent of harvested paddy rice remains unsold. And yet, urban consumers still pay near-import levels for rice. Why? Because imports act as the price anchor. Even when local rice is abundant, retailers prefer imported brands that arrive in well-packaged, uniform, low-risk consignments.

Imported rice has a long shelf life, predictable quality, and established trading networks, whereas local rice suffers from milling bottlenecks and inconsistent packaging. Urban traders therefore base their prices on imported supply chains, not on rural surpluses. The result is a structural decoupling: rural abundance does not translate into urban affordability.

A similar story unfolds with maize. The production cost per acre in 2024–2025 rose to GH¢8,100 due to fertilizer, fuel, labour, and input inflation. But the average revenue per acre fell to about GH¢3,000, producing losses of more than GH¢5,000 per acre. Farmers thus face a double tragedy: they produce more than ever before, yet earn less than ever before.

Meanwhile, consumers face the opposite problem: they pay more than ever before even though there is more than enough maize in the system.

The system fails in the middle, not at the ends. Farmers produce. Consumers demand. Everything between them collapses.

This collapse is not abstract. It is visible in the protests and political tensions that erupted in late 2025. On October 29th, twelve farmer associations announced a boycott of the national Farmers’ Day celebration, describing their situation as a “catastrophic market failure.”

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On November 10th, thousands marched in Tamale to highlight that over one million tonnes of paddy rice remained unsold. Government announced GH¢100 million to procure food through Buffer Stock, but the funds were exhausted almost immediately.

Days later, an additional GH¢200 million was released, along with directives for ministries and state institutions to buy local rice and maize. But with such a massive glut and limited logistical coordination, these interventions barely scratched the surface.

By late November, the crisis had spread to the south, where tens of thousands of crates of eggs remained unsold. Farmers described dumping their produce by the roadside while watching televised discussions about rising food inflation in Accra.

The tragedy is that Ghana does not lack food. Ghana lacks a functioning system to move, store, process, finance, and market food. The crisis is not agricultural in origin; it is systemic.

Logistics costs erode profit at every step. Storage infrastructure is inadequate for national needs. Milling and processing do not match production volumes. Import policy remains disconnected from domestic conditions.

Market power keeps urban prices artificially high. Farmers cannot reach consumers, and consumers cannot access farmers’ abundance. The country is therefore caught in the impossible situation of having “too much food” in some places and “too little affordable food” in others.

Ghana’s food glut is thus not an accident of weather or fate. It is a man-made crisis born of structural weaknesses. Farmers have done their part. The system has not. And until that system is rebuilt from the ground up, the paradox will persist: abundance without affordability, surplus without prosperity, and food everywhere except where it is most needed.