The Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG) is appealing to the government to immediately release additional funding to the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) to enable the agency to purchase surplus rice from local producers.
The Association says that insufficient funding for NAFCO has left several rice farmers unable to sell their harvest, compelling them to drastically reduce prices and suffer severe financial setbacks.
Reacting to reports of a growing rice surplus in parts of the country, Mr. Bismark Nortey, Acting Executive Director of PFAG, disclosed that NAFCO has received less than 10 percent of the resources it requested for its procurement operations. This, he noted, has resulted in large volumes of paddy rice remaining unsold nationwide.
“Many rice farmers still cannot find buyers because NAFCO lacks the financial capacity to buy all the rice currently available in the system,” Mr. Nortey stated.
He warned that if the challenge continues, numerous farmers might abandon rice production in the next planting season due to poor market access and low returns on investment.
“If this problem persists, most farmers will give up on rice cultivation because they risk losing their investments. We are therefore urging government and the President to make more funds available to NAFCO. The current budget allocation is far from adequate,” he stressed.
PFAG cautioned that without prompt government action, Ghana’s progress toward rice self-sufficiency could be seriously undermined. The Association emphasized that the current situation not only threatens farmer incomes but also poses risks to the country’s food security and agricultural growth.
