The Chief Executive of the National Food Buffer Stock Company, Eric Osei-Owusu has said the country’s current stock of food reserve can last for a maximum of 3 weeks in case of a food shortage. “We are a population of 24 million and so you need a lot of food to keep people going for a while before imports come in” he explained adding that government is not just “sitting and watching and not doing anything. Certainly, government is taking a lot of steps” to avert the occurrence of such a situation. Agricultural experts around the world are anticipating a global food crisis which would be more severe than that experienced in 2008. This they base on the continuous increase in food prices across the world with some experts also citing climate change and population growth as major threats to global food security. A recent survey conducted by Gallup, an American-based research group indicated that 53% of Ghanaians are unable to afford food because of higher prices. But the Chief Executive of the National Food Buffer Stock Company, Mr. Osei-Owusu disagrees with the research findings. Speaking on Multi TV’s PM EXPRESS program, Mr. Osei-Owusu said “I believe it [survey] is incorrect. Food affordability is very relative. We should tie it down to income levels. First of all let’s look at Ghanaians who live in the urban centres and the sort of wage structures they have and let’s look at the rural folk and how they are able to afford food.” He noted that “because of land availability [in the rural areas], almost everybody is into farming so most of them feed on their farm and for this reason I don’t believe there is shortage of or inaccessibility of food in these areas.” According to him, “when you come to the urban areas, if you don’t have a job, you simply cannot find money to afford food but if you have a job, I don’t think you’ll go wanting for food” thus for him, the accurate representation of Ghanaians who are unable to afford food will be 10% and not 53%. Mr. Osei-Owusu noted that “before the Gallup survey, government had already found out that there was the need to hold emergency food reserves so that if there’s any crisis, for instance, most of our farms here are rain fed, and so if there’s drought, what are we going to do?” “We must have some food stocks in reserve so we can use to at least buffer or take care of the of the situation until imported food comes in” , a move he said government had already started implementing. The Deputy General Secretary of the General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU), Edward Kareweh who was also on the show, however noted that because Ghana imports a lot of its food, it will be impossible to run away from the predicted global food crisis. Although he said he could not vouch for the 53% figure put out by the research group Gallup, he was of the opinion that the 10% proposed by Mr. Osei-Owusu was also too small. “Those with income are able to afford food...coming from the point that there is high unemployment in the country, one can infer that the number unable to afford food will be fairly large”, he said. According to Mr. Kareweh, Ghanaians must be concerned about the impending food crisis, adding that food security should not only be about the availability of food but also about access to food. He noted that farmers record post harvest losses of between 30 and 40 percent, a development which he said would make food prices too high for consumers or would make food available in small quantities to consumers. The Deputy General Secretary of GAWU described the country’s food situation as “fragile and cannot guarantee food security for the future.” Source; MultiTv