WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME ON GHANA'S MAIZE

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The World Food Programme, WFP has within the past five years bought five thousand metric tonnes of maize worth two million Dollars from smallholder farmers across Ghana, as efforts to transform their livelihoods. 


The Country Director of the WFP, Madam Magdalena Moshi announced this at a workshop for smallholder farmers at Fumesua near Kumasi. 

It was jointly organized by the WFP, the Ministries of Food and Agriculture and Trade and Industry and Ghana Standards Authority. Madam Moshi said one of the major challenges for the smallholder farmer is getting fair prices for their produce.

 She made reference to the traditional practice where maize was sold, using the “bushweight” system, where heaped bags of maize weighing between 130 and 150 kilogrammes were sold for the value of 100 kg, depriving the farmer of extra kilos per bag. 

She said in a bid to pay maize farmers fair prices for their produce, the WFP in 2012, provided weighing scales to farmers in the Ejura-Sekyedumase Municipality to make sure that each bag weighed exactly 50 kilogrammes, the required weight as per their contract with WFP. 

Madam Moshi said the farmers were amazed to discover that they earned between 30 to 50 per cent more from their sales not because of increased prices but because the bags were properly weighed.

 She said the Ejura-Sekyedumase case study was outstanding and showed that it was possible to standardize weights and measures in Ghana. 

The participating smallholder farmers were unanimous in their call for the appropriate state institutions to enforce laws on weights and measurements to ensure value for money, uniformity and fair trade.




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