The Majority Leader in Parliament, Mr. Mahama Ayariga, has expressed grave concern over Ghana’s annual food import bill, describing it as an indictment of the country’s agricultural performance despite four decades of celebrating National Farmers’ Day.
According to him, Ghana continues to spend between $3.5 billion and $4.5 billion each year on imported food, a development he says contradicts the very essence of the national celebration intended to motivate farmers and boost local production.
“Since being a child, every year I have heard of a National Farmers Day. But as we speak, our food import still stands at over 3.5 billion to 4.5 billion dollars. That is the reality,” he stated.
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Mr. Ayariga was contributing to a statement delivered by the MP for Atwima Mponua, Mr. Seth Osei-Akoto, on the retrospective history and significance of the National Farmers’ Day.
The day will be observed tomorrow Friday 5th December, 2025 in the Volta Regioni.
The leader questioned why a country endowed with vast fertile lands and the world’s largest man-made lake continues to rely heavily on food imports.
Food import bill
“Why would a country like Ghana, with all the arable land from here to Tumu and Bawku, with the biggest man-made lake lying in its centre, be carrying 3.5 to 4.5 billion dollars every year roaming around the world to buy food and ship and come and eat? Why?” he asked.
He cautioned that the huge import bill has far-reaching implications for the exchange rate, inflation, job creation and economic stability.
“If you import 3.5 billion dollars every year, it means you are looking for 3.5 billion dollars to go out and buy food. You are exporting jobs,” he stressed.
Mr. Ayariga called for a major realignment of national agricultural policy, insisting that the country must modernise its farming systems to attract the youth and increase productivity. He said farming must be appreciated as an engineering-driven venture requiring proper land preparation, irrigation and mechanisation.
“You cannot expect graduates of SSS today to pick cutlasses and axes to clear land with manpower. Just as we must engineer our roads, we must engineer our farms,” he emphasised.
He disclosed that the Northern Caucus in Parliament has resolved to champion the transformation of northern Ghana into the nation’s primary food basket. As part of this agenda, all regional ministers from the northern regions, together with the Bono Regional Minister, were taken on a 10-day study tour to commercial farms in South Africa’s Limpopo Province to understudy large-scale farming and job creation models.
Touching on Ghana’s historical development plans, Mr. Ayariga referenced Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s 1963 Seven-Year Development Plan, which envisioned the Akosombo Dam as not only a hydroelectric project but also a foundation for irrigation-based agro-industrial development.
“Nkrumah said the lake was also for irrigating farmlands and promoting agro-based industrialisation. How many decades now? And we still haven’t achieved this basic objective,” he lamented.
The Majority Leader urged the nation to use the occasion of Farmers’ Day to reflect soberly on Ghana’s agricultural shortcomings and chart a more ambitious path forward.
“We have failed. And we must remind ourselves of this failure so that we can sit up and do the right thing,” he said.
