Every available space, no matter how small, can be transformed into a valuable asset for families looking to reduce their food expenses. By embracing home gardening, households can cultivate their own food crops, such as tomatoes, okra, cassava, plantains, and onions, among others, in their backyards or even in sacks on cemented compounds.
This practice not only helps reduce the financial burden of buying these essentials, especially during dry seasons when prices skyrocket but also promotes food security and sustainability.
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture, through its Feed Ghana Programme, is championing this initiative, encouraging Ghanaians to adopt home gardening as a vital step towards reducing food inflation and achieving national food security, alongside other commercial agricultural production initiatives.
At a press briefing ahead of the launch of the flagship program on April 11, 2025 at Techiman in the Bono East Region, the sector Minister, Honorable Eric Opoku indicated pragmatic initiatives under the project will reduce the country’s annual food import bill of over $2 billion with poultry alone accounting for $300 million.
According to him, the country has no excuse to be importing such a volume of food despite its arable land.
He encouraged every Ghanaian, including social institutions such as schools and churches, to join the national initiative by making use of available spaces to grow crops.
Mr Eric Opoku also admonished district assemblies to take advantage of the opportunities the Feed Ghana Programme presents to generate revenue for the development of their communities.
“The country’s heavy reliance on food imports, which totals over $2 billion per year, with poultry alone accounting for $300 million, places Ghana at risk of external market fluctuations and currency instability. This dependency exacerbates food inflation, significantly affecting households and aggravating economic hardships for the most vulnerable populations,” he said.
The Feed Ghana Programme, Mr Opoku announced, is a project under the Agriculture for Economic Transformation Agenda (AETA) to modernise the agricultural sector to make it attractive and champion agribusiness development to “secure food availability, mitigate food inflation, increase export revenues, and generate sustainable job opportunities.”
The primary goal of the program is to see massive transformation in the agriculture sector where import dependency is reduced to boost both domestic production and export and “ensure food security and improve nutritional outcomes while creating sustainable employment and empowering our youth and women.”
To achieve this, the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku, added that the initiative would focus on raw material production to feed agro-processing companies by establishing farmer service centres in every district to provide input and mechanisation services to farmers to expand their operations.
It will also establish farm banks and support urban farming, revitalising the poultry industry in collaboration with the Poultry Farmers Association.
