It is time to re-visit Acheampong’s ‘Operation Feed Yourself’ – Mahama

Ex-President John Dramani Mahama has stated that Ghana must return to the ‘Operation Feed Yourself’ policy implemented by its one-time military leader, General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, in the 1970s. According to the former president, even though General Acheampong had his faults, his ‘Operation Feed Yourself’ policy was largely successful because it led to the country producing virtually everything it eats. The former president said that Ghana cannot continue to export food that it can produce because it is one of the main reasons for the Ghana Cedi’s continuous depreciation and the high inflation in the prices of food items. Mahama, who made these remarks during the presentation of his 'Building the Ghana We Want’ lecture, said that Ghana spends nearly $3 billion annually to import food it can produce locally which is very worrying. “General Acheampong, despite the depraved corruption that swallowed him up in later years, was off to a good start in the early part of his regime. His “Operation Feed yourself” and “Operation feed your Industries” programmes yielded massive results during the period from 1972 through to 1976. “We do enormous damage to our currency, the cedi, and our economy, when we spend billions of dollars on the importation of rice, sugar, tomato products, frozen fish, poultry, meat products and vegetable cooking oils. “Yet we have more than the potential to produce here to feed ourselves and even export,” he said. Mahama proposed that the government must put measures in place to support large-scale commercial agricultural production to achieve food self-sufficiency because supporting small-scale farming is not enough. Watch Mahama’s lecture below: You can also watch this episode of People & Places on GhanaWeb TV: IB/BOG