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Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Minister for Food and Agriculture, has reiterated that there is no food shortage in Ghana.

"There is no food shortage in Ghana as is being speculated, the food situations in the regions are enough evidence, however, we recognize that food is relatively expensive due to external factors".

The Minister said, the increase in prices of food commodities was not because of Ghana government's policies, but external factors such as the increment of imported chemicals and other external factors beyond their control.

Addressing staff of MOFA and farmers in the Eastern Region as part of his official tour, he assured that despite the external factors beyond control, the government was instituting measures to bring down cost of production to mitigate effect on consumers.

“We are encouraging farmers to switch to organic fertilizers produced locally to reduce the impact of fertilizer shortage on food production and urged the far west to switch quickly to the use of compost.

On financing from the banks, Dr Afriyie Akoto hinted that the government was looking at alternatives to compel banks to lend a portion of their loans to farmers to improve production.

That, he said was to address farmers' inability to acquire loans from the banks adding that several efforts to the banks had proved futile over the years and the banks preferred to give loans to business people than farmers.

Mr Henry Crentsil, Eastern Regional Director of MOFA, earlier disclosed that despite the shortage of fertilizers and cost of production, there were indications of high yields due to the planting for food and jobs and other interventions.

He said, for instance, farmers adoption rate of improved seeds had shot up drastically, particularly in maize and added that it was a sign of abundance of food and that the current soaring prices were seasonal.

The Minister, as part of the tour visited some commercial private farms including, the Legacy Crop Improvement Center (LCIC), a seed production hub at Otareso in the Akuapem North District and inspected the facility's warehouse embedded with a code room.

The team proceeded to visit Ibu's farms at Kwame Duodu.