Chief Executive Officer of the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO), Mr Hannan Abdul-Wahab, has allayed fears of Ghanaians over food insecurity concerns, in the wake of the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr Abdul-Wahab who touted the government’s successes in the Planting for Food and Jobs Campaign was confident the country’s food reserves were sufficient to avert any crisis.

In an exclusive interview with Business Finder in Accra, the NAFCO CEO said “we are 100 percent sufficient in maize; in fact, from 2017, we haven’t imported any maize.”

Mr Abdul- Wahab noted that for rice Ghana was 60 percent sufficient, explaining that there was a lot of work that had to be done on the rice value chain in terms of processing.

“If you reduce imports of rice and the quality of what you produce locally doesn’t match what comes into the country then acceptability will be low,” he stated.

An update on the impact of COVID-19 on the global food supply chain published by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) warned “we are faced with a looming food crisis, unless measures are taken fast to protect the most vulnerable, keep global food supply chains alive and mitigate the pandemic’s impacts across the food systems.

NAFCO supports local food production

The company has thrown its weight behind farmers involved in the production of selected staples, providing storage and processing support NAFCO, the CEO noted was helping with the provision of appropriate equipment for processing farm produce and adding value to them.

“We are helping to get existing rice mills to get modern mills that have de-stoners and color sorters that can separate foreign materials from the processed rice,” he stated.

The NAFCO CEO disclosed that the government was supporting selected soybean farmers to increase production.

According to him “soya is doing very well; we are 50% sufficient in terms of soya bean production.

Mr Abdul-Wahab attributed the boldness of the NAFCO in declaring the “no concerns over food security,”to the success of government’s flagship agricultural programme, Planting for Food and Jobs.

“That programme has been the reason behind our boldness. We have enough in stock and are still buying more from farmers,” he added.

Warehouses

NAFCO was preparing for a formal handover of 32,000 metric tonnes capacity warehouse from the One district, one warehouse special initiative and 14000 metro tonnes capacity warehouse from the ministry of agriculture and the rest by end of year for storage.

“Whatever u produce without storage will end in losses,” Mr Abdul-Wahab said.