Article By: Richard Adjorlolo
Ghana has almost 24 million hectares of land with about 20% being arable (suitable for growing crops). It is estimated that about 1.9 million hectares of the arable lands are irrigable although less than 5% of this is actually irrigated. The agricultural potential of the country is therefore huge and may justify the pride of the country as a major agricultural nation.
Successive governments have invested so much resources in the agricultural sector by providing improved seeds, fertilizers, irrigation facilities, mechanisation and many other critical inputs to farmers leading to improved yields. Unfortunately, that is where it ends! In the last quarter of 2025, there were cries from rice and maize farmers about their inability to dispose their harvests for 2024 and 2025 creating a glut in the market.
This is not the first time this is happening and may not be the last. Glut is a good sign but not good in itself. Anytime there is glut, consumers benefit but farmers suffer and it is only a question of time farmers will take their pound of flesh from consumers. One of the challenges in the poultry sub sector has been fluctuations in the availability of maize resulting in feed price hikes. Somewhere in 2020 to 2023 feed producers had to import maize to feed the poultry industry. With the volatility in the exchange rates then, prices of poultry feed increased practically every week.
Just a year or so later we have a glut of maize in the market. What is happening? At one time there is severe shortage and just the next season there is glut. The challenge has been that after the farmer has produced, the system expects the farmer to find ways of marketing their own produce. Marketing is a discipline people go to school for years to acquire and yet we expect farmers to engage in it efficiently.
The farmer may not have the means of transportation, storage, breaking bulk among other middlemen activities. Until we allowed farmers to focus on their farming, using their time to farm and not to market, we are likely to experience these two extreme conditions; that is, gluts and shortages season after season. Rationally, no businessman or for that matter, no farmer, will deliberately hold unsold stocks and still go ahead to produce more of same; he may not have the additional capital and may incur needless cost.
So, what may happen is that after a bumper harvest the farmer may abandon the land, use ‘farming time’ trying to sell their produce, “farmer turned trader”. They are cheated and exploited and where the produce is highly perishable; the least said about it the better. By the time he returns to the land, from their P a ge 1 | 3 marketing escapade, a season is gone by, which means there is likely to be shortage the next season.
Other farmers switch to different commodities that had good prices during the last season. This could explain the ding-dong production patten we have in Ghana. The establishment of the Buffer Stock Company (BSC) mimicking the COCOBOD structure is a viable solution to keep the farmer on the land. But it looks like the BSC is not functioning well.
If we do not hear of glut in the cocoa sector then we must not hear of glut in key staples such as maize, rice and others. It must not take the President to order the release of funds before the BSC can perform its mandated duty. The functions of Buffer Stock should not only be to buy excess foods on the market but to redistribute them across the country, preventing glut in one region and shortage in another.
Mr. Richard Adjorlolo
There is a lot of business opportunities in the agriculture value chain that the private sector (especially the youth) could be encouraged to take advantage of. The youth could be encouraged and supported to set up related small processing plants close to farming communities to buy off and process farmers’ produce. For a start the processed foods should have guaranteed market (in schools, prisons and military etc.) until they are able to penetrate the open market successfully.
The support to these processors could be considered as part of support to the agriculture industry as a whole. The emphasis is on small processing plants. Large scale plants expose countries to concentration risk. Ghana is currently facing such risk, where large factories such as the meat, Bonsa tyre, tomato, sugar factories have all collapsed and that brought us to the end of our processing capacity.
Assuming there were one hundred small tomatoes processing plants, one hundred small sugar processing plants and so on, the story would have been different. Moving towards small scale processing plants or factories is the obvious solution. This model also comes with secured employment, eliminate gluts, farmers will have secured market (secured market with guaranteed prices will encourage farmers to stay on the land and even bring more people into farming) competitive prices and many other benefits.
These small-scale processing plants could be set up in back yards, garages, private homes, shops, in the market stalls etc to reduce upfront investment cost including land. If we will succeed in our drive towards food sufficiency, reduced import bill of basic foods such as maize, rice and others and stabilised and strengthened our currency, then we must do more than just supplying improved seeds, fertilizers and other inputs and shift focus to processing what we produce by so doing also preserve and prolong the life of our produce.
The agriculture value chain ends when farmers’ produce find their way to P a ge 2 | 3 consumers’ tables and factory floors with nothing going waste, and until we channel investments to this end, we may not reap the full benefits of our investments in agriculture. It may be understandable if we cannot manufacture heavy and complex machineries, but if we fail to produce and manage our own food with all the God-given fertile lands is unacceptable and unforgivable.
By: Richard Adjorlolo BIG RKNA Takoradi.