Agric Minister is giving Ghanaians false hope of food security – Braimah
Afriyie Akoto lied about Soya Bean production to Tony Blair – Braimah
Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, Sulemana Braimah, has bemoaned the rate at which the Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has been giving wrong information about Ghana’s food production levels.
According to him, the minister, by this action is giving Ghanaians a false indication that the country is food secure which is not the best.
Braimah, who made these remarks in a JoyNews interview monitored by GhanaWeb, further stated that even though some of the policies of the government have been helpful in raising the food production level of the country, its benefits are being outweighed by the high level of misinformation.
“One of the ministries in this country that has been chinning out very wrong and false information has been the Ministry of Agriculture. The Planting for Food and Jobs is certainly a great initiative, unfortunately, whatever that is good about the initiative has perhaps been taken away by the high level of propaganda and the high level of misinformation that is often chinned out by that ministry, in terms of our food production capacity and rates and in terms of what is happening in our agriculture sector.
“I think the minister himself has always been putting out false information, he is always being exposed for the wrong information that is put out there but it appears that it does not deter him and that is why we are where we are,” he said.
Citing an example the executive director said that “for example, if you take our soya beans production, the minister on February 3rd in a meeting with Tony Blair put out false information that before 2017 when this government came to power Ghana was producing less than a 100, 000 metric tonnes which was false and then he went on to say that since coming to power soya bean production has increased to a quarter of a million tonne which again is false because the latest information by the ministry showed that Ghana was not doing more than 210, 000 metric tonnes as at 2020.”
Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, in March, said that documents from his ministry that show that Ghana's maize production in 2018 was around 600,000 metric tons is wrong.
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture's Operational Performance (2017-2018) report prepared by the ministry's research department showed maize production for 2018 was 637,200 tons.
In a Citi FM interview monitored by GhanaWeb, the minister said, "No, no, before we came into office, the highest maize production in Ghana was 1.8 million metric tons. We have increased that to 3.1 million metric tons by 2020 … the total production (in 2018) was never 637,000 metric tons."
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Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, Sulemana Braima