Food insecurity is a prevailing issue in Ghana, however it is more prevalent in the Northern savannah region of Ghana than the southern part of the country. A lot of issues, especially policy issues can be said to give rise to this. Past governmental policies in Ghana which aimed at solving this intensified agriculture and in the end export crops were favored over smaller produces. Ghana has turned over to modern industrial approaches which will likely not address the insecurity issue as well.
What is food insecurity?
Food insecurity occurs when food is not available, accessible or sufficient in quality as quantity. It is an opposite of food security which occurs when food is available to every person in a region has access to nutritious, sufficient and safe food at all times. Food insecurity issue in the Southern Ghana is not as high as that in Northern Ghana. The southern Ghana, food insecurity is between 1 and 7 percent, however, in Northern Ghana food insecurity is as high as 10 to 30 percent.
Previous Ghanaian Era and Food insecurity
To really understand the origin of food insecurity in Ghana and the best way of solving the imminent challenge, a close look should be taken on the past era of Ghana. Food insecurity in Ghana is not a new thing as it existed in the previous era. A close look should be taken on the British colonial rule in order to understand the trends of agricultural development policies in Ghana.
The colonial masters focused on Southern Ghana and paid little attention to Northern Ghana. The emphasis on southern Ghana was on export crops and this led to immense infrastructural development in the region and hence rural-urban migration took place from Northern Ghana to Southern Ghana. As a result of governmental desires to create employment for unemployed youths, show the public how important industrialization was and so forth, a lot of policies were made in the colonial period.
In the period after industrialization, government focused on large scale agriculture through mechanized farming and also expanded the role of the ADC but the ADC strategy failed. As a further step to improve food security, Ghanaian government established the Ghana Food Distribution Corporation (GFDC) which focused on the distribution of foods and also promotes food production through pricing and marketing policies in favor of poorer households. However, GFDC also failed after some time of its establishment.
The structural adjustment period between 1983 and 1992 is a period in which the Ghanaian government attempted to prevent the economy from collapsing and hence sought the help of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The policy was focused on deregulation of both input and output markets. This resulted to the increase in the cost of most agricultural chemicals by up to 40% each year from 1986 to 1992. This truly had a great toll on domestic food production and exposed local farmers to competition from foreign producers.
Ghanaian government focused on modernizing subsistence agriculture and will obviously not address the issue of food insecurity in Northern Ghana. This is because industrial agriculture relies on costly and high-yielding seeds, artificial fertilizers and machineries which local farmers obviously do not have means to access and it is these local farmers that mostly suffer food insecurity. To solve food insecurity issue in Ghana, effective strategies should be devised to place more importance on farming experiences.
