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The Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Hon George Oduro has Called the former Nadmo Coordinator, Mr. Joseph Yamin a liar on a claim by Mr Yamin that there is a shortage of maize across the country to feed their livestock. According to Mr Yamin while being interviewed by OK fm on Wednesday 16th of May 2018, he emphatically said that the poultry farmers have to order and even that will take some time before they are able get some of the maize for their poultry.
“There is a shortage of maize in the country and the price has gone high. Last week I bought a bag of maize for 72 Ghana cedis but this week the price has increased to 80 Ghana cedis and from my point of view the way things are going it can increase next week”, Mr Yamin said. He stressed that the increase in price is as a result of the incoming new maize in the market. According to the market women, whenever the maize is due for harvest, the old maize becomes expensive and scarce. Moreover, due to the army worm pandemic that set in sometime this year in parts of the country, maize yields has drastically reduced, which has in turn affected the poultry farmers as well as regarding poultry feed.
“The Minister of Agriculture called my farm a backyard farm all because I complained of army warm attack on my farm but I would like to ask if 4 acres of land is a backyard farm?” Mr Yamin lamented on OK FM when being interviewed by Kwame Nkrumah on OK morning show. According to Mr Yamin, the chemicals introduced were just for trial and error purposes, simply because the Ministry was not sure the chemicals could fight the army warms.
In response to this claim, the deputy Minister of Agriculture, Hon. Oduro called Mr Yamin a liar, saying there is no shortage of maize in Ghana. “Let Yamin go to Takyiman and tell the market women there is a shortage of maize in Ghana, he would see what they would do to him. He will be beaten because their maize are in the market without any patronage. They don’t get people to buy them”, Hon. George Oduro said. According to him he personally went to the maize markets in the country on this issue and just returned home on Tuesday 14th May, 2018 so he has the relevant facts on the availability of maize.
He pointed out that one market woman complained that there is no money for her to pay the driver who brought her maize to the market. This was due to the low patronage by the consumers and has resulted in lack of capital for their business. To resolve her issue with the driver she would have to send mobile money to the driver when buyers come for the maize. This indicates that there are more maize on the market without buyers.
The host of the morning show asked the minister the reason why this time around there is more maize in the market, the minister associated this to the ‘Planting for Food and Job’ policy that was introduced by the president of the Republic.
According to him, over the past years Ghana used to import yellow corn from Brazil to feed our poultry farms. He mentioned that each year Ghana used to import twenty thousand (20000) tonnes of maize from Brazil into the country but since the government introduced the ‘Planting for Food and Job Policy’ there has been no importation of yellow corn from Brazil but rather we are feeding our poultry farms with the locally grown maize.
Mr Oduro alleged that there are 2 people who are behind the false information that there is a shortage of maize in Ghana and it is because they were those importing the yellow corn into the country. Hon. Oduro stated that at the beginning of this year the Chairman of Poultry Farmers Association approached the minister to seek permission to import yellow corn from Brazil to add up to what is in the country so the minister gave him the opportunity to import three thousand (3000) tonnes but up till now they have not been able to import the yellow corn all because is now expensive as compared to what is produced locally.
He however pleaded with Ghanaians to embrace the policies the government is putting in place to tackle food insecurity and unemployment issues in the country.
