The Vice President has challenged the Food and Agric Ministry to implement targeted, deliberate policies to make Ghana self-sufficient in chicken production and save the nation from the huge poultry import bill.

Dr Mahamudu Bawumia's comment follows an announcement by the Food and Agric Minister, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, that there was no maize imports this year. 

This Dr Akoto explained was due to the Ministry's implementation of policies such as the Planting for Food and Jobs which resulted in a bumper harvest.

The Vice President has, therefore, challenged the Ministry to replicate this success in the poultry sub-sector to ensure a drastic reduction, if not an outright cessation, of poultry imports in the next few years.

He said this when he launched the 34th National Farmers Day on Friday in Accra.

This year’s weeklong celebration, which would take place at Tamale in the Northern Region, is under the theme “Agriculture: Moving Ghana Beyond Aid.”

“I want to challenge the Ministry and Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, that yes, you have announced that we’ve stopped importing maize this year, so very soon, in the next couple of years, I want you to announce that we’ve also stopped importing chicken.

"That is the challenge that I want to give you in the next couple of years. We have to pursue a very deliberate policy intervention to make sure that we can grow and eat our own chicken," he said.

Dr Bawumia underscored the key role agriculture would play in achieving President Nana Akufo-Addo’s vision of a Ghana Beyond Aid.

He emphasised that it was time to “engineer a sustainable agricultural development path that would assure both national and household food security, improved rural livelihoods and make Ghana agriculture competitive in the world market.”

According to him, in much the same light, government would continue and expand the implementation of ongoing agricultural programmes such as the Planting for Food and Jobs, which would see the number of direct beneficiaries rise from 200,000 in 2017 to 500,000 in 2018, Dr Bawumia disclosed.     

“Government’s approach and strategy for the development of Ghana’s agriculture is holistic and transcends the PFJ initiative. Equally important interventions are being rolled out in the irrigation sub-sector in pursuit of the One Village One Dam programme.

"Under this One Village One dam programme, which is being implemented in the three northern regions, we expect about 570 dams to be constructed by next year.

"The increase in agricultural productivity means we have to focus on processing and that is why we have the One District One Factory flagship programme and this is also on course.

He conceded that government is aware of the challenges in the road sector which affects agriculture production.

"In the 2017 budget, we outlined what we call the Akufo-Addo plan for Economic Transformation which was largely focused on improving agricultural productivity.

"At the heart of this programme was to make sure that critical roads across the whole country were fixed so that agricultural produce could move to market. We have so many parts of the country where poor roads are a major inhibiting factor to agriculture," he said.

"We are going to invest close to a billion dollars in road infrastructure starting this year, under the Sinohydro barter facility that we have arranged,” Dr Bawumia indicated.