As a staple food item in Ghana, rice is cultivated across all agroecological zones in the area. As such, the paddy rice output increasingly rose at 10% per annum from 2008 to 2019.
Rice import in Ghana has been continually above 50%, yet the challenge lies in the domestic production shortage (MoFA, 2018). This agricultural stagnation has directly impacted the country’s economic positioning two folds:
– volatilities in foreign exchange
– susceptibility to international price shocks in commodities such as rice
Despite these socio-economic challenges, Ghana has fertile inland valleys such as the interior Savannah which provide favorable for home-grown rice. Ghana has the potential to expand its present average rice production area of 89,700 ha to a significant 200% with these conditions.
These factors have culminated in our decision to prioritize and strive towards boosting the production of the country’s staple food item – rice. The goal is to substitute rice imports and produce high-quality grains for Ghanaian consumers. This has been concurred by other key national stakeholders such as the National Rice Development Strategy in 2009 and the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) in 2017 (MoFA, 2017a).