The Food and Agriculture Minister, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, says critics of the government’s Planting for Food and Jobs policy are being unrealistic when they blame recent food price hikes on the alleged failure of the policy.
He insists that the policy is thriving and yielding astounding results just as envisioned by the President when he launched the programme.
According to him, such results can be seen in the Agriculture sector’s 8.4% last year even amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express he argued that the cause of food inflation in the country is as a result of external factors affecting the local agricultural industry.
“I’m just coming from spending 8 days in 5 forest regions, there’s a lot of food in the system. In the enclave of Bono East, Techiman going all the way to Ejura that enclave, physically we saw something like 25,000metric tonnes of maize from last year’s harvest packed there waiting for buyers. So for me if you say high prices of food and therefore the policy has failed, you’re not being realistic,” he said.
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