An appeal has been made by the newly-appointed Vice President-Confederation for the Development of Poultry in Africa (CADA), Mr. John Bewuah Edusei, calling for commitment to revive the local poultry industry and the agricultural industry as a whole.
This, he said, should be done while shunning the political gimmickry that has characterised successive governments’ policies on the sector, especially in the face of threatening global food insecurities.
He cautioned that the country’s failure to transform the agriculture sector could result in hunger and famine, especially due to a ‘population explosion’.
According to the 2022 United Nations Population Division forecast, the future population of the world’s countries – based on current demographic trends – will reach 9.7 billion people by 2050 and 10.9 billion by 2100.
Meanwhile, a greater proportion of this population growth is expected to come from the African continent.
It is against this background that Mr. Edusei cautioned that a great famine beckons the continent if leadership do not take pragmatic steps in domesticating agricultural products.
“The time to plan is now. We either plan towards 2050 today and stop the games and politics or be ready to face the consequences of our actions tomorrow,” he stated.
The Vice President of CADA, who was speaking at a media engagement in Kumasi on his return from the CADA conference in Morocco, stated that: “Nobody knows when the next disaster will strike this world; we need to plan and ensure food security before it is too late.
“If dry Morocco and Burkina can grow their food requirements, green Ghana must do better in maize and chicken production,” he added.
He said Ghana will have to do more to feed its citizenry as the forecast emphasises animal-based protein, especially from poultry products.
“Poultry will have to play a major role going forward. But where are the poultry farms today? It becomes obligatory for us to have a systematic and sustainable development poultry growth plan…All our major layer-farms are down, and our broiler production is below 2 percent of national requirements,” he lamented.
Furthermore, he mentioned that some farms have declined from a capacity of 800,000 birds to less than 20,000 – noting the situation as worrying, “but the worst part of it is the exceptionally high job losses”.
Ghana’s chicken imports, according to Mr. Edusei, have almost doubled from US$375million in 2018 – noting that government has failed in curbing the high importation figures, leading to rampant job losses locally.
However, he acknowledged that the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ (PFJ) programme increased maize production; but insisted that the successes will be useless unless it is linked with a robust plan for pricing, storage and marketing.
He advocated that it is time to buy the produce at a good price from farmers, store them in our silos and market it all year round.
“The earlier as a nation we start with strategic programmes to systematically increase maize and poultry production, the stronger we will be to face the consequences of population hikes in 2050 and beyond,” he stated.
The purpose of CADA is to promote the poultry industry in Africa, through training and defending the interests of African poultry players through strategic programmes.
It also aims to promote and develop Modern Poultry Farming. This materialises the common vision of establishing a systematic growth in African poultry all over the African continent.