The National Food Buffer Stock Company Limited have been tasked to get in touch with local foodstuffs suppliers to deliver about 20 per cent of food needs to each school.
The remaining 80 per cent of the food items are expected to be in the schools a week or two after the arrival of the students to enable the government to settle part of its more than GH¢300 million indebtedness to suppliers.
The President of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS), Rev. Fr Stephen Owusu Sekyere said, he is aware some schools had taken delivery of food items such as maize, rice and beans, saying the rest were yet to receive theirs.
He indicated that per the information CHASS had received, food supplies are on their way to the various regions and the schools should take delivery of them by the close of today.
Food getting in the schools
From the Upper East Region, school authorities in SHSs are ready to receive first-year and continuing students to begin the new academic year.
However, checks indicated that many of the schools had not yet received food supplies ahead of the commencement of academic work.
The Chairman of the Upper East Regional branch of CHASS, Richard Akumbas Ayabilla, said only two out of the 26 SHSs in the region had received some food items from local suppliers.
“Since the schools owe local suppliers huge sums of money, the suppliers are not willing to supply more food items, especially the perishable ones, on credit,” he said.
He called on the government to urgently make funds available to enable the schools to pay local suppliers, while awaiting food items from the Buffer Stock Company.
The Headmistress of the Bolgatanga Girls’ SHS, Patricia Agoteba Anaba, said although the staff were ready to receive the students, food items were not yet in.
However, she said the school expected to receive food items from the government by the close of yesterday.
Ms Anaba expressed the hope that while the students would start arriving from this morning, the food items would be received in time to feed them.
The Headmistress of the Kongo SHS, Gifty Ayamba, noted that the school was ready and had put in place measures to receive the students.
From Koforidua in the Eastern Region, Daily Graphic checks indicate that two schools, the Ghana SHS (GHANASS) and the Oti Boateng SHS, were fully prepared to receive continuing students.
The Headmistress of GHANASS, Patience Naki Mensah, said at least 20 boarding students had arrived as of yesterday and the kitchen staff were ready to provide them with meals.
She said under normal circumstances, such students should have waited for today to be fed along with other students who might have arrived on the opening day.
At the Oti Boateng SHS, the situation was the same and the Headmaster, John Hawkson Arthur, said adequate preparations to make boarding students feel at home on their arrival had been completed.
“We have made all the necessary arrangements to make the arriving boarding students happy to stay without any hindrance. “Those responsible for the provision of food are also ready to play their part,” Mr Arthur said.
Buffer Stock.
The Buffer Stock Company started supplies last Wednesday and would continue until bulk suppliers in charge of delivering 80 per cent of the food needs of the schools stepped in, a source at the company told the Daily Graphic.
The strategy, it said, had been adopted since it took some time for the bulk suppliers to reach the schools.
“So while waiting for that bulk to come in, we asked our regional managers to liaise with local suppliers, so that they will handle 20 per cent of supplies,” the source said.
It added that “so far the items are trickling in at the various schools”
.The source at the Buffer Stock Company added that its information collected from across the country indicated that food items were reaching the various schools.
Over one hundred (100) cocoa farmers in Denkyira Breman in the Central Region have issued a stern warning to Perseus Mining (Ghana) Limited (PMGL), underscoring that the company risks having its equipment destroyed if they find them on their farmlands.
According to the visibly livid farmers, who say they have not given out their lands to Perseus Mining, any move by the company to ‘forcibly take over their lands’ grown with cocoa and other food and cash crops, “would incur their wrath!”
Addressing a press conference in Denkyira Breman in the Central Region recently, the Chief Farmer of the town, Emmanuel Boapong (aka Bojers), who acted as the Spokesperson for the farmers, cautioned that they will “set ablaze any mining equipment of Perseus found on their farmlands,” especially when they have not leased out their lands to the company.
He stressed that the over 100 farmers in Denkyira Breman who have no reason to sell their lands to Perseus cannot fathom why the mining company was hell-bent on taking possession of their lands.
“Our warning to Perseus is that we will burn any of their machines found on our farmlands. We have told them time without number that we will not give our lands to them for mining, and that we are content with our farming business, yet their machines are often found on our lands” the chief farmer stated.
According to the chief farmer, they have already informed both the Police Commanders at the Diaso District Police Command and the Dunkwa Divisional Police Command about their resolve to do everything humanly possible to protect their lands from the prying eyes of Perseus.
He questioned the motive behind the recent deployment of about 17 armed police officers from the Central Regional Police Command to the farmland of a widow, Madam Esther Konadu, who is also a farmer.
“In fact we have reason to believe that Perseus is ready to go the extra-mile to take the lands of especially farmers who are unwilling to lease out their lands to them,” he noted.
As a result, Mr. Boapong called on the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dr. George Akuffo Dampare, to, as a matter of urgency, cause an investigation into the incident that saw staff members of Perseus drive their excavator, a drilling machine and other machines to the farmland of the widow.
Furthermore, he called on the Akufo-Addo administration to step in before the matter becomes messy!
The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) Ghana is demanding a significant reduction in the prices of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), after prices of some petroleum products fell in the recent pricing window.
The Chamber’s call is coming at a time prices of diesel and petrol went down by about 8% on January 1, 2023.
However, prices of LPG remained unchanged. The LPG Marketers Association of Ghana has blamed the situation on high taxesBut speaking to Joy Business, Executive Secretary of COPEC, Duncan Amoah said there is no justification for LPG prices to remain unchanged.
“LPG should have seen the highest decline in terms of price per kilogram which should be around 20% in the past windows. We don’t think there is enough justification at this point that they are not going to reduce the price of LPG at this point”.
He added that his outfit will soon be engaging the LPG Marketers for a possible reduction in the price of the product.
“We will try to engage them forthwith to ensure that what is due the consumer now is not denied them simply because of the call for taxes to be reduced on LPG”.
Vice President of the LPG Marketers Association of Ghana Gabriel Kumi had earlier indicated prices of LPG will fall only when there is a cut in some taxes.
According to him, prices of LPG should not be determined by the demand and supply in the market, but government should implement policies key to support players in the industry.
The General Agriculture Workers Union (GAWU) has appealed to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to prioritise the supply of fertilisers and seedlings ahead of the planting season under the Planting for Food and Jobs programme.
This, according to GAWU, will help resolve serious challenges faced by farmers in the past two years in purchasing fertilisers ahead of the season leading to low output.
Speaking to Joy Business, the General Secretary of GAWU, Edward Kareweh, said farmers need to get fertilisers on time to be able to handle critical issues that may arise during the farming season.
He warned that failure to adequately supply the farm inputs could negatively affect yields in the harvesting season.
“In 2021, farmers did not get fertilisers at the right time. This is very critical to handle. If you do not get fertilisers at the right time, or you even get the fertilisers late and you apply it, you will not get the appropriate results”, he said.
Mr. Kareweh recalled that farmers had to struggle to buy fertilisers at prices over 80% the original price due to lack of the farm inputs.
“For the past two years, farmers have been struggling across all the crop areas. If you talk about maize, tomatoes, soyabeans. Farmers planting these crops have struggled in the last two years. It has been a desperate period for farmers”, he lamented.
Touching on food inflation, he stated that a pragmatic policy on the supply of fertilisers could help drive food prices down, hence inflation.
As the new year begins, it’s a great time to think about new opportunities in Africa’s agribusiness and food industries. This list of nine potential ideas for 2023 is meant to stimulate initial thought and further investigation, rather than provide definite opportunities or comprehensive business plans.
Chairman of Competitive African Rice Platform, Ghana Chapter, Yaw Adu Poku says the local rice sector has now received an ‘angel investor’ to maximise and promote the production of local rice.
He said after several pleadings and solicits, he managed to secure an investment from the Jospong Group for the rice sector.
According to him, the Jospong Group had already paid a visit to Thailand to understudy Ghana’s failure to survive in local rice production.
Mr Poku noted that the company, this month paid flight tickets for thirty-three experts from Thailand to be in Ghana for the next year for a full-scale study to identify the gaps in Ghana’s rice production.
“Now we have an angel investor in the rice sector so next year you will see a different story altogether. Somehow I solicited, pleaded, and begged on my knees and I got the Jospong Group’s involvement.
“This man did not only come in, he went to Thailand to understudy why Ghana cannot produce rice, and then just this month he has brought in thirty-three experts from Thailand on his own ticket to live in Ghana for the next year.
“He wants them to do a full- cycle for us to understand where the gaps are, that is the angel investor we have,” he said on Newsfile, Saturday, December 24.
For this reason, Mr Poku is optimistic that the narrative about the local rice sector would be different from 2023.
In 2020, Ghana spent $ 391 million on the importation of rice, becoming the 20th largest importer of rice in the world. In the same year, the country recorded rice as the 3rd most imported product.
Over nine million tonnes of rice was imported into the West African sub-region, representing about $3.4 billion of import bill in 2021.
In 2019, the Government began a campaign to promote local rice and improve the production of the product.
The “Eat Ghana Rice” campaign is part of a series of initiatives that have been rolled out under an Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) funded project to improve rice production in Ghana.
However, the campaign seems to have not yielded enough results as the country continues to surge in the importation of rice.
In this regard, some Ghanaians have called on government to replicate Nigeria’s ban on the importation of rice in 2015 to boost the local sector.
Soubre, Ivory Coast – On a small cocoa plantation in the southwest of Ivory Coast, a group of men hack away at the yellow and red fruit used to make chocolate.
The farmers race against time, working tirelessly on individual plots of land to collect as many cocoa beans as possible during the West African country’s main harvest season, between October and March. A smaller harvest begins in April.
However, erratic rains caused by climate change have dampened the group’s spirits as some fear they will harvest less than expected. “I have to support a family of eight people, and I will only make around $1,200 to $1,500 from this year’s harvest,” said Eugene Kouassi, tending a two-acre plot in Soubre, a town in the heart of Ivory Coast’s cocoa land.
For most smallholders like him, cocoa farming is their sole source of income. “This money has to last for most of the year,” he said. Cocoa farmers in the region are on the “front lines of the climate crisis”, according to West Africa director of the Rainforest Alliance, Siriki Diakite. And when their harvests suffer, so do their livelihoods.
This is further compounded by how little they are paid per kilogramme for their crop, something the Ivorian government has been trying to tackle as it fails to force the world’s multibillion-dollar chocolate industry to pay farmers fairer cocoa prices.
Ivory Coast produces around 45 percent of the world’s cocoa beans, but receives only around four percent of the chocolate industry’s estimated annual worth of $100bn.
Millions of cocoa farmers in the country survive on an average of just $0.78 a day, according to the World Economic Forum.
For context, 1kg of Leonidas chocolate, a popular upmarket brand in Europe, would take Kouassi around 45 days of work to be able to purchase at a cost of around $32.
‘Companies want maximum profit’
Since 2020, several attempts by the Ivorian government to make chocolatiers pay premiums on the price of cocoa have failed as large companies push back on anything that will eat into their margins.
In October, Ivory Coast and Ghana – which supply 65 percent of the world’s cocoa – boycotted an industry meeting in Brussels, a sign that they will no longer sell the commodity at unfavourable prices. “The chocolate companies want to accumulate the maximum profit,” Ivory Coast’s minister of agriculture, Kobenan Adjoumani Kouassi, told Al Jazeera. “And when they prioritise profit, it is poor people who suffer. They have to understand that it is exploitation, and it needs to stop.”
In 2020, both West African countries introduced the Living Income Differential (LID) – a $400 premium placed on every tonne of cocoa transferred directly to the smallholder farmers.
The chocolate companies pay the premiums to traders that purchase the beans from large collectives dotted around the country. The collectives gather the harvest from local farmers, adding the premium to the price.
However, despite accepting to pay the levy, some chocolate companies quickly found ways to avoid it. Media reports alleged that American chocolate giant,
The Hershey Company, bought 30,000 tonnes of cocoa via the United States futures exchange, ICE, in a bid to avoid paying the LID; however, this could not be independently verified.
Chocolate companies usually buy cocoa directly from the source, but if they buy the commodity on the secondary market, through an exchange, they will not have to pay the associated premiums.
Two years since the premium came into effect, Yves Ibrahima Kone, the director general of Le Conseil du Café-Cacao, the national regulator which introduced the LID, said that in reality, “no one [the chocolate companies] wants to implement it”.
‘They will have no choice’
In Ivory Coast’s cocoa region, knowledge of the premium varies depending on whom one speaks with. “We have never heard of the LID,” said Lobou Doudou Honore, the chief of a small cocoa farming village called Gripzao, north of Soubre.
The chief is the spokesman for around 60 cocoa farmers, each of whom tends plots of varying sizes around the village. He says every single person in the village relies on cocoa as a primary source of income.
Around 50km (31 miles) south of Soubre, the director of a collective of more than 2,000 cocoa farmers said they were paid the LID for the past two years. “Our buyers are Tony’s Chocoloney, Mondelez and Ferrero,” said Doumbia Assata Kone, director of the Meagui cooperative.
The forward-thinking director is trying to encourage farmers to engage in other sources of income-generating activities, like making honey.
However, authorities say the latest strategy used by companies to avoid paying the LID is by not paying another charge known as the origin differential – a premium set according to the country of origin. If traders do not pay the origin differential, they can claim to pay the LID but in reality, the price is the same as if no premium were added.
The LID was set by Ghana and Ivory Coast but the origin differential is a premium determined by the market based on quality and provenance of the beans. “This is what the chocolate companies are currently playing with,” said regulator Kone, who travelled to Rome in September to tell manufacturers that Ivory Coast would no longer sell cocoa at a negative origin differential for the first time in three years.
There has not yet been an official response from the industry. Early reports suggest that global commodities trader Cargill, which processes and distributes grains, oil and vegetables among other agricultural products, bought 25,000 tonnes of cocoa with a positive income differential for the 2023/2024 season, and it is hoped others will follow.
This should have a positive impact on the money that farmers receive at the end of the supply chain. Yet, industry insiders believe that Ivory Coast will continue to face stiff opposition from chocolate companies which can generate more annual revenue than the entire African country.
The Ivory Coast’s agricultural minister, Kouassi, however, believes that the West African country finally has chocolate companies in a tight spot. “They will have no choice but to eventually pay the prices we demand,” he said. “We produce the most cocoa in the world.”
‘Reduce the supply, increase the demand’
Paul Schoenmakers, head of impact at Dutch chocolatier Tony’s Chocolonely, said most chocolate companies have plenty of room to redistribute wealth further down the supply chain. “The bigger players in the chocolate and cocoa sector could easily pay farmers more, dilute some of their margins and still make a decent profit,” he said. “In the end, it’s a matter of choice, whether you want to maximise your profits at the expense of extreme poverty.”
In fact, Tony’s Chocolonely is paying 82 percent more than what the government is asking in an effort to fairly compensate Ivory Coast’s farmers – and it still makes a profit.
Schoenmakers said that the chocolatier “pays much more” than the LID, taking into account recent increases in the costs of living and farming.
For farmers to make a decent living, Le Conseil du Café-Cacao says that cocoa must be sold at a minimum of $2,600 per tonne. This would give farmers a 13 percent margin to recuperate costs and make a small profit.
However, cocoa is currently trading at around $2,300, meaning that even with the addition of the LID, the farmers will only just make a fair wage.
Analysts say the price of cocoa has declined over the course of the pandemic due to reduced demand for chocolate – putting further pressure on farmers’ incomes.
In response, Kouassi said Ivory Coast is artificially limiting its cocoa supply to try and keep prices high. “We have taken vigorous steps to stop new plantations from being built,” he said. “The objective is to reduce the supply and increase the demand.”
The drastic measure reflects a growing sentiment among Ivorian and Ghanaian authorities that heavyweight cocoa producers will no longer be forced to sell the commodity at unfavourable prices by foreign companies.
The African producers have been emboldened by the recent possibility that Nigeria and Cameroon – which together represent around 15 percent of global cocoa production – will join the Côte d’Ivoire-Ghana Cocoa Initiative (CIGCI), a formal partnership to represent the interests of both countries. If this happens, chocolatiers will have even less room to manoeuvre as the four African countries will account for 75 percent of the world’s cocoa production. The remaining 25 percent mainly comes from Indonesia, Brazil and Ecuador, among others.
“Two-thirds is not nothing,” said the minister, referring to the amount of cocoa beans Ivory Coast supplies the world market. “If you refuse to pay the LID, we will refuse to sell.”
The Minority in Parliament says farmers are set to face a crisis during the next planting season if government does not settle its indebtedness to suppliers.
The government currently owes suppliers of fertilizer and improved seedlings several millions of cedis.
Speaking during the consideration of budget estimates for the Ministry of Agric, Deputy Ranking Member on the Food and Agriculture Committee Dr Godfred Seidu Jassaw says the suppliers are threatening to freeze supplies to farmers who desperately need them.
“Speaking to industry players, most suppliers of fertilizers and improved seeds that have been registered to supply these inputs for the planting for Food and Jobs Program have threatened to supply for the next production year because they have been owed money that they have not been paid.”
Dr. Seidu Jassaw faulted the Finance Ministry for the non-release of funds to the Ministry for Food and Agriculture to effect such payments.
“The Ministry for Finance has not been releasing funds to settle this indebtedness. Mr Speaker, this means that our farmers are likely not to have an adequate supply for these inputs that we so require to prosecute the next production season,” he added.
He sounded the caution that this will have a devastating impact on Ghana’s food sector and could lead to a crisis.
In September this year, the National Seed Traders Association of Ghana (NASTAG) asked government to settle a GH¢207 million debt owed to its members for the supply of seeds during the 2021 cropping season.
The seeds were supplied under the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative.
NASTAG, in a statement signed by its President, Kwabena Adu-Gyamfi, said its members had been made poorer and left frustrated by the government’s failure to pay the money owed for 14 months after the seeds were supplied to government.
The statement warned that the government’s failure to settle the debt promptly could hamper the efforts to revamp the agriculture sector, particularly the PFJ initiative.
Ghana’s Trade and Industry Minister, Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen, has advocated for intensive investment in the agricultural sector as part of major plans to economically empower the African continent.
The industrial expert made this pronouncement during the recent summit of US- African leaders in Washington DC from December 13-15, 2022.
The U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit was anchored on the shared values of fostering new economic engagement; reinforcing the U.S.-Africa commitment to democracy and human rights; mitigating the impact of COVID-19 and future pandemics.
It also focused on working collaboratively to strengthen regional and global health; promote food security; advance peace and security; respond to the climate crisis; and amplify diaspora ties.
Ambassador Tai reiterated the need for the two sides to work together to fulfil AGOA’s promise to boost the productive capacity of the continent and to pursue equitable growth for all segments of both societies.
Central among the many areas discussed was the extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) which is set to expire in September 2025.
Mr Kyerematen, in his speech at the roundtable, called for the need for enhanced US investment in selected strategic sectors such as Agriculture and Agribusiness, oil and gas, blue ocean economy and investment in light manufacturing industries, support for the development of infrastructure including roads, rail, port infrastructure and renewable energy.
The longest-serving Trade and Industry Minister in Ghana urged African leaders and the United States to identify key areas whose transformation will be felt by the average African amidst the global economic meltdown.
Mr. Kyerematen also joined President Akufo-Addo to attend a series of high-profile meetings and events including the meetings with the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the President of the World Bank Group.
He represented the President of the Republic at the National Black Chamber of Commerce Business Forum as well as the US Chamber of Commerce and Corporate Council on Africa’s Presidential Dialogue all in Washington DC.
