Ghana is close to becoming self-sufficient in tomato production to end heavy reliance on importation to meet domestic demands, says the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku.
Appearing before the Parliament’s Select Committee of Assurance on Thursday July 9, 2026, he stated that government’s efforts to boost local production of tomatoes will start yielding tangible results in the next four months.
“We have started working on that challenge, and we are bent on reversing that story. Within the next three (or) four months, the results will be out there for Ghanaians to testify,” he said.
His appearance before the Committee is to give an account on progress of commitments made by President John Dramani Mahama in the 2025 State of the Nation Address (SONA).
Mr Opoku explained that the government has made some investments towards all-year tomato production, including irrigation infrastructure such as solar-powered boreholes in major production centres across the country.
The Minister added that other investments included drilling boreholes, installing solar-powered pumps to irrigate farmlands, and fencing farms in areas prone to livestock intrusion to protect crops, adding that irrigation projects are major priorities in several tomato-growing areas across the country.
“President Mahama himself has taken special interest in this, and he says that we should bring an end to importation of tomatoes into this country, and we’ll do just that,” he stated.
Falling Food Prices
Responding to concerns raised by the Chairman of the committee, Dominic Nitiwul, over falling food prices at the detriment of farmers’ incomes, Mr Opoku said while consumers were benefiting from cheaper food, it has been a difficult situation for many to recover their production costs.
He described the situation as what agricultural economists call “good-bad”, where abundant food production benefited consumers through lower prices but adversely affected farmers because over supply depressed market prices.
“The bad-good is when there is shortage of food in the system, like we witnessed in 2024 because of the dry spell.”
“Then food prices started going up.
A lot of people were pushed into abject poverty because of the rising food prices.
“But the farmers who were able to produce little made a lot of money because of the rising prices.
So, for the farmers, it was good, but for the nation, it was bad.
Now we find ourselves as a nation in this situation. I am a farmer. I am suffering. But the nation is the beneficiary,” he said.
To mitigate the impact of the problem, Mr Opoku said the Agric Ministry submitted proposals to President Mahama and Cabinet to cushion farmers against the effects of declining prices.
As part of the measures under consideration, he disclosed that the government had settled on the provision of free fertiliser as an emergency intervention to sustain farmers’ interest in production while pursuing long-term solutions through agro-processing and the creation of reliable markets.
He however said that prolonged low prices without adequate support could discourage many people from farming, emphasising the need to expand processing and value addition to absorb excess produce and guarantee stable incomes for farmers.
