The Ministry of Food and Agriculture on November 11, 2022, began the retailing of food items at its premises to civil and local government workers.
The move is a calculated one by the government under its Planting For Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme to cushion the ordinary Ghanaians against the telling economic hardships.
The gesture clearly muscles out the massive disparities between prices of the foods at the production areas and urban centres due to the costs involved in the agric value chain.
THE GHANAIAN PUBLISHER without mincing words applaud the ministry for introducing this initiative in this time when virtually every facet of the Ghanaian economy is on its knees due to the soaring prices of petroleum products.
The paper would rather urge that the food market be expanded to include cabbage, yams, carrot, pepper, spring onions, cucumbers and rice and the other staples.
The initiative since its introduction had featured bunches of plantain and recently some tubers of yam.
Aside of our call for the expansion of the food basket, the paper also urges that the markets are rotated to cover a wide range of people.
For us everyone in every nook and cranny must enjoy and smile a little when the need be and should not be the preserve of only a few group of persons because they happen to live in Accra or work close to the Agric Ministry.
Those in the hinterlands where the foods are planted must also have the benefit of the foods they plant for those in the urban areas to eat by taking a critical look at the level of their develop by way of the roads that connect to these farms.
While the paper wishes the Ministry well in this initiate, we should all help to make it a sustainable programme that would be part of the programmes of government.
