There has been a significant improvement in food security for the last two years. According to the Chief Executive of the National Food and Buffer Stock Company, Hanan Abdul-Wahab, a research conducted in 32 districts of the country indicates that majority of households surveyed were more than 90 percent food secured.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation describes food security as when people at all times have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs.
Speaking to Joy Business at the opening of a national validation workshop on food storage policy and procedure manual in Accra, Hanan Abdul-Wahab, said the National Food and Buffer Stock Company has expanded storage capacity to be able to receive food from the harvest of the planting for food and jobs programme.
The country’s food security has been a topical issue in the past few days due to the pronouncement by the Minister designate for Food and Agriculture during his vetting that the country is safe.
According to the National Food and Buffer Stock Company, food security conditions are showing signs of significant improvement as the widespread harvest of staple grains have aided the recovery of households from constrained access to food.
“Preliminary assessment of the production of major staples such as maize, rice sorghum and millet during the 2020/2021 cropping season showed a general increase compared to 2019 and the five year averages”, he emphasized.
“Food security has improved and moving forward I can say Ghana is generally fine with food but we still think there is still room for more improvement” he further said.
Consultant for the National Food Storage Policy and Senior Lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Dr. Robert Aidoo also said the importance of a food storage policy in the quest to ensure food security in the country must not be taken for granted.
The two days’ workshop will also be used to validate the policy and move towards approval by the relevant authorities.