General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, Ghana’s former military ruler, instituted the “Operation Feed Yourself” strategy in the 1970s, according to former president John Dramani Mahama.
Even though General Acheampong had his shortcomings, the former president said that his “Operation Feed Yourself” approach was mostly effective because it allowed the nation to produce almost all of the food it consumes.
According to the former president, one of the main causes of the continual depreciation of the Ghana Cedi and the high rise in food prices is Ghana’s export of food that it can produce. As a result, the country cannot continue to do so.
Mahama, who made these remarks during the presentation of his ‘Building the Ghana We Want’ lecture, said that Ghana spends nearly $3 billion annually to import food it can produce locally which is very worrying.
“General Acheampong, despite the depraved corruption that swallowed him up in later years, was off to a good start in the early part of his regime. His “Operation Feed yourself” and “Operation feed your Industries” programmes yielded massive results during the period from 1972 through to 1976.
“We do enormous damage to our currency, the cedi, and our economy, when we spend billions of dollars on the importation of rice, sugar, tomato products, frozen fish, poultry, meat products and vegetable cooking oils.
“Yet we have more than the potential to produce here to feed ourselves and even export,” he said.
Mahama proposed that the government must put measures in place to support large-scale commercial agricultural production to achieve food self-sufficiency because supporting small-scale farming is not enough.
Bring back ‘Operation Feed Yourself’ – Mahama to Akufo-Addo