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The failure of government to purchase seedlings for the seed banks for storage and onward distribution to local farmers is threatening the food security and sovereignty of the country, investigations conducted by this Journalist reveals.

Investigations indicate that since 2010, the government of Ghana has failed to release funds for the purchase of seedlings to stock the seed banks across the country.

 There are only three seed banks in Ghana; One in Winneba in the Central Region, Kumasi in the Ashanti Region and Accra in the Greater Accra region. Interestingly and unfortunately, all these warehouses are empty. They contain no single bag of seedlings for research and distribution.

An official of the seed bank Authority, who spoke to this reporter on a condition of anonymity, bemoaned the refusal of government to release funds from the budget allocated for the Ministry of Agriculture.

According to him, since 2010 not a single fund has been released by the government of Ghana for the agricultural sector. ‘”the minister of agric will go to parliament and declare that the government has allocated this amount of money for the agric sector. I can tell you that since 2010, we have not received a penny for the Youth in Agric programs or purchasing of seedling for the seed banks for research and distribution for local farmers. As you can see, we are here doing nothing. All the projects we started under the youth in agric have come to a standstill. We are in difficult times’”, he said.

Asked if there are implications or dangers associated with the unavailability of seedlings, he said “Yes there are implications. First and foremost we can’t develop our own seedlings out of research to conform to the climatic conditions. Ghana is now resorting to importing foreign seedlings for the local farmers and nobody can tell if it suits the soil and climatic conditions. Until 2010 we had a stock of about 6,000 bags of variety of seedlings at the Winneba warehouse alone. We also had 4,000 bags each at the Kumasi and Accra warehouses but these have been empties and for three years have not been replaced.

Ghana is only sufficient in root and tuber crops. The rest are imported from outside. We import rice, maize vegetables like carrot, cabbage, lettuce, onions among others.

In 2010, we won a contract from the World Food Programme to supply about 100,000 bags of maize for cash to be supplied to war torn countries but this could not be realized due to financial constraints. As we speak the price of farm produce are steadily increasing at the detriment of the ordinary Ghanaian so nobody should be surprised if there is food shortage in Ghana. We should not blame climate change for this problem it’s the negligent of our leaders and their selfish interest.