The President and Chief Executive Officer of the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), Henk van Duijn, says his outfit is poised to collaborate with the government to restore soils to enable farmers to produce quality yields for the country.
The collaboration, he said, will help the country move away from the importation of produce from other countries as well as make produce affordable for the Ghanaian market.
Mr. Duijn said this when he led a delegation from IFDC to pay a working visit to the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Bryan Acheampong, on May 9.
He noted that his outfit is ready to partner with the Ministry to strengthen local private sector and farmer groups to curtail the country’s penchant for importation of produce.
The IFDC President told journalists, “We believe restoring soils will help farmers produce more in Ghana. There’s a huge opportunity to restore soils in the coming years. The African Union Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit is coming up and Ghana could be one of the frontrunners to implement an action plan on how to restore soils. We hope to work with the Ministry to provide our expertise in models in strengthening the agricultural value chain, farmer commitment, and entrepreneurship”.
“Food security can be developed in the country where the local private sector could produce affordable yields for the Ghanaian market to stop the purchase of produce from abroad. This is an exact strategy of the Ministry, and we are happy to support that approach. We believe that strengthening food security in Ghana via the private sector and farmer groups is the way to go”.
He hoped that IFDC and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in future to seal their collaboration where they will offer technical expertise to the Ministry.
“IFDC is looking forward to closer collaboration with the Ministry. We would like to see how we can strengthen our collaboration and expertise with technical support to the Ministry’s strategy, and we are looking forward to signing an MoU in the future”.
On his part, the Food and Agriculture Minister assured of his outfit’s preparedness to partner IFDC to enhance food security.
“We seek more collaboration with IFDC to ensure that in the next 4 years, we will be food secured. We are coming up with a road map to ensure our food security and resilience. This will help us to produce enough yields for exports. Importation of tomatoes, and onions will be a thing of the past,” he said.
