Operationalising Ghana Agricultural Commodities Services
Dedicated transport services (Ghana-ACTs) for the transport of agricultural products from the farmgate to the markets and consuming centres are needed.
These continue to be in the context of current high inflation being recorded by the country mainly driven by food and transport cost.
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The Ghana Statistical Service reported Ghana's annual inflation rate accelerated for the 14th straight month to 31.7 per cent in July of 2022, from 29.8 per cent in June, breaching the upper ceiling of the central bank's target band of six to 10 per cent for 11 months.
It was the highest recorded since the month of December, 2003, surpassing market forecasts of 30.8 per cent for the period. Food and transport cost inflation continues to be key drivers of the peaking inflation in the country.
While food and agricultural products continue to rot away at farmgate and production centres, prices of same at most locations continue to be unaffordable particularly for the poor and minimum wage earners.
Currently there is no dedicated public sector transport arrangement for the transportation of agricultural commodities from production centres to other parts of the country.
The distribution of the produce is solely left in the hands of private market players (market queens) who make their own arrangement to transport food from the farmgate to the end consumer markets.
Furthermore, most of the transports when made available are not appropriate. For example, tomatoes and other perishables are expected to be transported in cold chain. Cold chain transportation refers to the transportation of food at preset low temperature to guarantee the freshness of food during transportation to reduce loss.
Policy intervention gaps
Over the years, Ghana’s Agricultural sector policies and programmes interventions (example in recent years is the Planting for Food and Jobs programme) have largely focused on increasing production at the farm level without much attention on how the products resulting from the increased production will be efficiently distributed spatially (across space) and temporally (across time/seasons).
End results are: wasted production outputs and resources, poorer small farmers and a nation of abundance production struggling for food at an affordable cost to feed its population.
Changing narrative
There is the need to engage all the relevant stakeholders in the agricultural value chain and the transport sector to ensure a sense of ownership of the programme for sustainability and to give true effect to its intended purpose.
The government can partner the private sector to establish and operate dedicated agricultural product transport services at all regional food production epicentres for the real time transportation of agricultural commodities across the country.
The Ghana-ACTs will have a farmgate linkage to evacuate the product from the farmgates/rural outlets to dedicated centres for inter-regional distribution. It should be structured to have the right transportation system that ensures that food is moved efficiently.
It calls for appropriate transport and storage facilities that ensures that the food is safe. It calls for not only having the facilities, but the appropriate facilities that ensure that the food is safe.
Government can make use of the already built buffer stock storage facilities across the country as centre for the aggregation and transits for the commodities.
A well-functioning ACT will not only ensure timely and easy evacuation of agricultural commodities from the farm level but will also reduce the per unit transport cost to consumer markets. It will reduce post-harvest losses significantly and give better farmgate prices to producers.
Ghana-ACTs will consolidate the production side gains and stabilise food prices and distribution across space and time.
The writer is an Agricultural Economist and Food Security Consultant, PhD Candidate in Agricultural Economics-UDS, Tamale. E-mail: [email protected]