The Ministry of Food and Agriculture has dismissed concerns by former President John Mahama in relation to a likely food shortage in the country next year. In a statement, the ministry said Mr. Mahama is perpetuating lies just to assuage public anger after his do or die remarks about the 2024 election. “The former President, in an attempt to shift the public discussion from his rather reckless and infamous ‘Do or Die’ comment which has attracted public backlash, has decided to attack one of government’s most successful flagship policies Planting for Food and Jobs.” “In fact, apart from becoming desperately notorious for making reckless comments in recent times, the former president is now also engaging in scare-mongering, thriving on lies and falsehoods just to put fear in Ghanaians,” the statement added. The former President has predicted a likely food shortage to hit the country in 2022 if the government does not pump more funds into the programme. Speaking on Moonlite FM in Sunyani as part of his “Thank You Tour”, Mr Mahama said the rising cost of crops can be attributed to the failure of the government to fund the programme which was started by his administration. Justifying why he asserts the Planting for Food & Jobs Programme is a failure, Mr Mahama stated that many farmers including his own brother are yet to receive fertilizers promised by the Akufo-Addo government. “My brother is a farmer and he tells me this year, he has not received any fertilizer supply from government and so he bought his own fertilizer and a bag of fertilizer is very expensive. Normally, he cultivates 300 acres of maize each year. But this year, he had to reduce it, he was not able to cultivate even 80 acres. So there’s a possibility of food shortage next year because the Planting for Food & Jobs Programme has failed.” But the ministry in a response said the PFJ programme had succeeded in its objectives including introducing farmers to fertilizers and improved seeds. “Today, many more farmers are aware of the need to adopt the use of fertilizers and improved seeds in order to increase production.” “We, therefore, wish to reiterate the fact that the country is very safe from any threats of food shortage and that the Former President is only engaging in a desperate scaremongering just for political expediency,” the statement said. Find below the full statement IGNORE FORMER PRESIDENT MAHAMA, HE IS A SCAREMONGER!! Ghana is not facing food shortage, PFJ is very much on course!! Our attention has been drawn to a rather unfortunate comments by the Former President, Mr. John Dramani Mahama, about the status of the country’s agriculture and food security, during his so called Thank You tour across the country. The Former President, in an attempt to shift public discussion from his rather reckless and infamous ‘Do or Die’ comment which has attracted public backlash, has decided to attack one of Government’s most successful flagship policies Planting for Food and Jobs. In fact, apart from becoming desperately notorious for making reckless comments in recent times, the Former President is now also engaging in scare-mongering, thriving on lies and falsehoods just to put fear in Ghanaians. In a meeting in the Bono Region, Former President Mahama is on recorded to have made several false claims about the PFJ programme which was introduced by the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led administration in 2017. We wish to set the records straight as follows; INTRODUCTION OF THE PLANTING FOR FOOD AND JOBS PROGRAMME The Former President claimed in his speech that the Planting for Food and Jobs programme was an initiative of the previous NDC administration and that his regime secured funding from the Canadian Government for its implementation. This is completely false. The fact is that the Planting for Food and Jobs is a wholly Government of Ghana (GoG) funded programme. Mr. Mahama has in fact, confused the Modernising Agriculture Ghana(MAG) programme, which involves a $100M Canadian Grant, exclusively meant for the expansion of extension services programme with that of the Planting for Food and Jobs initiative which involves five major areas the Food Crop Model, Planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD), Rearing for Food and Jobs (RFJ), Greenhouse Villages (for Vegetable production and Export) and Mechanization for Food and Jobs. However, it is instructive to note that since 2017, Government of Ghana has spent over $400M Dollars on the PFJ, expenditure of which had gone into subsidies of improved seeds and fertilizers for farmers. It must also be stated that the previous administration of the NDC led by Mr. John Dramani Mahama, left the agriculture sector in a state of moribund and comatose. The extension sector, which is supposed to be the fulcrum around which growth of agriculture revolves, had totally collapsed when the NPP assumed power. Under the watch of Incompetent Mr. Mahama, the extension sector did not see any staff enforcement for four years. Though the country required about 4000 extension officers to support the over 3.5M farmers, the NPP in 2016, inherited less than 1400 staff capacity. The worst part of this situation was that, 80% of the staff had reached their retirement age and were on their way out. To ensure the efficient use of the available resources, President Akufo Addo, under the PFJ programme, immediately granted clearance for the recruitment of over 2700 new extension officers to support the implementation of the programme. Ghana was importing virtually every food item; including thousands of tons of maize, plantain, banana etc from neighbouring countries. Available data in 2016 indicates that Ghana imported about 113,855 and 79,771 metric tons of maize respectively in 2015 and 2016, and same could be said of other major staple foods such as yam, plantain and Soyabean. The food situation of this country was so bad that farmers could not afford fertilizer for their crops, leading low yields. Planting for Food and Jobs therefore came to reverse this trend and by the end of 2017