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By Edward Graham Sebbie
Onion farmers at Kotoso and Pitiku in the Kwahu East and South Municipalities of the Eastern Region of Ghana are pleading with President John Dramani Mahama and the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku, to urgently control the importation of foreign onions in order to create a ready market for local produce.
Their latest appeal follows a lack of buyers for their produce, which is resulting in post-harvest losses.
According to the farmers, the continuous importation of onions from Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, and other neighboring countries is affecting the patronage of locally grown onions. Traders and consumers, they explained, prefer the imported variety due to its comparatively lower price.
Narrating their frustrations to VoiceAfricaonline.com’s Edward Graham Sebbie, the worried onion farmers revealed that this year’s farming season yielded a bumper harvest, producing enough onions to feed the entire country. “We can assure the nation that there is enough to meet demand. However, our main challenge is the lack of a ready market to purchase the onions we heavily invested in,” they said.
They explained that local farmers are currently struggling to compete with the relatively cheaper imported onions, which dominate the market. The farmers therefore appealed to the government, through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, to institute measures to regulate the influx of imported onions, particularly during the peak local harvest season. Such measures, they stressed, would enable farmers to sell their produce, pay off bank loans, and sustain their livelihoods.
This development comes just three days after maize farmers in the same enclave also complained of gluts and appealed for government support.
The situation is troubling, as it has the potential to push farmers in the Kwahu area and Afram Plains—known as a major food basket of Ghana—out of business, bringing in its trail the threat of food insecurity.
A closer look at the situation suggests that despite government’s efforts at ensuring national food security through various interventions, there appears to be little or no plan for the proper storage of excess produce to prevent such crises.
It is not only maize and onion farmers who are affected; other producers in the agricultural sector have raised similar concerns, calling for swift and holistic measures to address the situation. Anything short of this, they warn, could soon plunge Ghana into food insecurity—one of the major drivers of high inflation.
