KEY POINTS
- Farmers face rising imports and currency pressure.
- Conflict of interest in Ghana’s rice system deepens.
- Old rice stock piles up as new harvest begins.
Vice Chair of the Competitive Africa Rice Platform, Dr Ama Aning Oppong-Duah, says many producers are still holding large volumes of unsold grain from last year even as new rice is ready for harvest.
“We still have unsold rice from last year, and more is coming in,” Dr Oppong-Duah said on JoyNews’ PM Express on Wednesday.
She explained that the problem began when farmers bought fertiliser, seed, and inputs at high exchange rates. The cedi later strengthened, making imported rice cheaper than locally grown grain.
“So when that happened, it became cheaper for people to bring in rice — foreign rice,” she said. “Farmers had produced at a certain cost, and the foreign rice became cheaper.”
Conflict of interest in Ghana’s rice system
Dr Oppong-Duah said the crisis deepened as the National Buffer Stock Company slowed operations during a transition period linked to the change in government.
“They weren’t buying as they were supposed to,” she noted. “So there was quite a murky situation at the time.”
With imports flooding in and no state intervention, farmers were left with unsold produce. “The people, of course, were buying the cheaper imports that had come into town,” she lamented.
Despite the setback, she said many farmers planted again this year following a new directive and access to fertiliser support. But the challenges remain unchanged.
“We are now in the harvesting season,” she said. “There’s rice sitting from last year because we haven’t been able to sell, and there’s more rice coming in.”
