Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture, Yaw Frimpong Addo, says chemical fertiliser is in short supply all around the world.

According to him, the fertiliser shortage dates back to the Covid-19 era.

Speaking on the Business Edition of PM Express, on Thursday, Mr Addo said the Russia-Ukraine war is also partly to be blamed for the shortage of fertiliser.

“Those two countries together I think account for over 60 percent of the world supply of chemical fertilizer and chemical fertilizer is in short supply all around the world. It started not today and the era of the Covid pandemic so the world…. Before the outbreak of this war we realise that fertilisers were going up,” he said.

There has been major threat to Ghana's food security as local crop production faces a double hurdle of imminent fertiliser shortage and predictions of prolonged drought.

Government has revealed it may not be able to meet even half of the budgeted fertiliser for this year.

This revelation comes just days after peasant farmers threatened to move away from the production of grains and cereals following the 15% slash of subsidy for fertiliser by government.

The Agric Minister further confirmed government's comments on the fertiliser situation.

He said: “at the moment it’s very bad because what we budgeted for fertilizer supply for this year in the 2022 budget, I can tell you that the amount that we require, we will not be able to supply half of it because of the price differential.”

He, however, noted that government is encouraging the local companies to shore up their production of organic fertilizer.

 He added that “the uptake of such organic fertilizers will depend on the kind of education we do with the farmers.”

Meanwhile, the Meteorological Agency is predicting a slightly longer dry weather period for the 2022 farming season. A late onset of rains and mostly normal cessation are also expected.