Ghana faces its first ever nationwide boycott of Farmers’ Day celebrations as agricultural producers threaten to abandon the December 5 event unless government immediately addresses a crisis that has left 1.3 million metric tonnes of paddy rice and over 100,000 tonnes of maize unsold despite repeated promises of intervention.
The unprecedented coalition involving 12 major farming associations represents rice producers, maize farmers, mechanization service providers, input dealers, and agribusiness stakeholders united in what they describe as a stand for survival rather than protest against tradition. Their ultimatum arrives as Cabinet approved emergency funding for the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO), yet farmers report no actual purchases have materialized despite ministerial assurances dating back to September.
Regional harvest figures paint a stark picture of the magnitude facing producers. The Upper East harvested 300,000 metric tonnes of rice this year, North East produced 400,000 tonnes, Northern Region contributed another 300,000 tonnes, while Savannah, Upper West, and Volta added 50,000, 20,000, and 100,000 tonnes respectively. Nearly all this produce sits in warehouses or by roadsides with no buyers in sight as the 2025 harvest season begins layering fresh crops onto unsold inventory from 2024.
Charles Nyaba, speaking for the Rice Producers, Rice Millers, and Maize Farmers Association, described the situation as life and death for farmers who borrowed capital for production inputs. He emphasized that producers are not requesting fertilizer subsidies or handouts, simply asking government to release promised funds enabling NAFCO to purchase directly from farmers before financial collapse becomes inevitable.
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture issued a public statement September 23 pledging every grain of rice and maize would be purchased through NAFCO, establishing minimum farm gate prices and advising producers not to sell below those rates. Yet according to farmer representatives, no such purchases occurred, leaving producers unable to repay loans while watching markets flood with cheap imported rice allegedly brought through unapproved borders by politically connected cartels.
These smuggled products reportedly evade taxes and quality inspections, entering markets at artificially low prices that local producers cannot match after bearing full production costs. The coalition claims expired rice gets repackaged and distributed through government contracts while domestic farmers face bankruptcy trying to compete against subsidized foreign grains dumped illegally into Ghanaian markets.
Majority Leader Mahama Ayariga disclosed during parliamentary proceedings that Cabinet approved releasing significant resources to NAFCO, marking the first major financial intervention since the company’s 2010 establishment. He confirmed funds have been authorized to mop up excess produce and stabilize markets, yet the disconnect between Cabinet approval and actual farmer access to those funds illustrates systemic implementation failures that characterize Ghana’s agricultural sector challenges.
NAFCO’s mandate includes guaranteeing minimum prices and ready markets for farmers, mopping up excess produce to reduce post harvest losses from poor storage, and maintaining buffer stocks ensuring stability in supply and demand. The company purchases, stores, and distributes grains to state institutions including military, schools, hospitals, and prisons, creating natural absorption capacity for surplus harvests if properly funded and managed.
Food and Agriculture Minister Eric Opoku inaugurated NAFCO’s reconstituted nine member board in June with Board Chairman Dr Eric Osei Owusu, a former NAFCO Chief Executive Officer (CEO), pledging to align operations with the government’s Feed Ghana Initiative. The 2025 budget allocated funds supporting NAFCO operations, yet the gap between budgetary allocation and operational execution leaves farmers watching their livelihoods deteriorate while bureaucratic processes prevent promised interventions from materializing.
Policy think tank IMANI Africa released a brief titled Food Glut in Ghana: When Production Outpaces Market Planning, arguing the crisis stems not from overfarming but inadequate foresight in agricultural planning. The analysis maintains Ghana’s agricultural policies focus almost entirely on boosting production while neglecting what happens after harvest, creating wasteful gluts that drain farmer capital and undermine sector sustainability.
IMANI proposes four critical reforms converting surplus challenges into foundations for sustainable growth. First, urgent investment in warehouses, cold storage systems, and rural feeder roads ensuring food moves quickly from farms to markets before spoiling. The think tank notes tons of maize, rice, and vegetables rot across farming communities because they cannot reach buyers in time despite urban demand for those exact products.
Second, stronger border enforcement protecting local grain markets from unfair competition. IMANI argues Ghana must balance open trade against protecting farmers who cannot compete when imported rice or maize produced under heavy subsidies elsewhere undercuts local prices. The brief emphasizes border checks should strengthen enforcement against illegal imports while safeguarding domestic producers from dumping practices that destroy local agricultural viability.
Third, empowering farmers through data and cooperatives. When producers work together sharing information, planning crop cycles, and pooling resources, they better match supply with actual market demand. Reliable data on what crops are needed, when, and where can prevent gluts in one region and shortages in another, ensuring farmers grow for markets rather than simply growing food without regard to absorption capacity.
Fourth, supporting local processing to absorb surplus. IMANI emphasizes converting raw produce into value added goods like rice flour, breakfast cereals, and packaged grains creates jobs while helping stabilize farm prices and ensuring surpluses are not wasted. When local industries can absorb excess harvests, farmers gain guaranteed markets transforming how agriculture fuels industrialization and rural employment.
The Chamber of Agribusiness Ghana warned in September that the grain sector was approaching crisis as farmers faced debt and many sold below production cost. The Chamber stressed that smuggled rice and maize bypassing duties and quality checks flood Ghanaian markets at artificially low prices, cautioning that if government failed to act swiftly, entire subsectors of maize and rice industry could collapse.
Already some mills and processing plants operate far below capacity while others shut down completely due to lack of sales. The economic ripple effects extend beyond farmers into ancillary industries including transportation, storage, packaging, and retail sectors that depend on viable agricultural production for their own sustainability.
Talensi Member of Parliament (MP) Daniel Dung Mahama urged farmers to remain calm, noting government interventions are underway and NAFCO has been instructed to purchase excess produce. He advised farmers to use traditional storage methods while government mechanisms activate, suggesting patience as bureaucratic processes move toward implementation despite the urgency producers experience watching their capital locked in unsold inventory.
The farmer coalition demands suspension of all foreign rice imports for six months effective November 2025, with tightened border controls preventing smuggling that undermines domestic production. They call for developing medium to long term importation strategies based on national production capacity, allowing only limited imports covering shortfalls while gradually phasing out dependence on foreign grains as local capacity expands.
Additionally, farmers want public institutions including schools, hospitals, prisons, and security services mandated to procure exclusively Ghana grown rice and maize from local producers and millers. This captive market would provide reliable absorption capacity reducing vulnerability to price fluctuations and import competition while supporting food sovereignty objectives anchored in domestic production.
The coalition also demands guaranteed minimum prices protecting farmers from market exploitation, ensuring production costs get covered with reasonable profit margins rather than forcing sales below cost that drive producers into debt. Without price floors, farmers face perpetual uncertainty about whether harvests will generate income or losses, discouraging investment in productivity improvements that could strengthen sector competitiveness.
National Rice Development programme data projects Ghana’s 2025 rice harvest will reach 1.5 million metric tonnes, increasing from 1.3 million in 2024. This production growth, while indicating agricultural success, compounds the glut crisis if market systems cannot absorb expanded output without collapsing prices that make farming economically unsustainable.
The paradox of agricultural abundance creating farmer poverty illustrates fundamental disconnects between production policy and market reality. Ghana celebrates increased yields and expanded acreage as development victories, yet those achievements become disasters when producers cannot convert harvests into income because markets lack capacity to absorb supply at prices covering production costs.
IMANI emphasizes the glut should serve as wake up call to build value chains turning productivity into prosperity. The think tank argues Ghana remains fixated on how to grow food without equivalent attention to how food moves, stores, or sells efficiently. Turning this around requires structural rethinking of how agriculture connects to markets and industry beyond emergency measures addressing immediate crises.
The boycott threat represents more than symbolic protest. Farmers’ Day celebrations honor agricultural producers and their contributions to national food security and economic development. Abandoning the event signals that farmers feel dishonored by policies leaving them financially devastated despite successfully producing the abundance those policies encouraged.
The coalition stressed the boycott does not reject recognition itself but demands respect through fair policies rather than empty celebrations while livelihoods collapse. They characterize their decision as refusing to participate in festivities while members face bankruptcy from government inaction on promises that created expectations subsequently betrayed by implementation failures.
Supporting organizations include Association of Rice Producers and Millers, Chamber of Agribusiness, Association of Soya Value Chain Actors, Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, Ghana National Association of Farmers and Fishermen, General Agricultural Workers Union, CropLife Ghana, Ghana Rice Inter Professional Body, National Seed Trade Association of Ghana, Millers and Processors Associations, Traders and Market Women Associations, and Association of Parboiled Rice Millers.
This breadth of representation demonstrates the crisis extends across Ghana’s agricultural spectrum rather than affecting isolated subsectors. The unified front suggests systemic rather than localized problems requiring comprehensive policy responses addressing root causes instead of piecemeal interventions treating symptoms while underlying failures persist.
World Food Programme data reveals food insecurity in Ghana reached its highest levels since 2017, almost doubling to over 2 million people compared to the same period in 2024. The Northern and Transition Zones, home to just 28 percent of the population, account for 56 percent of all food insecure people including all those experiencing Emergency levels of food insecurity.
The bitter irony sees regions producing massive rice surpluses simultaneously experiencing severe food insecurity, exposing how production alone cannot solve hunger when distribution systems fail to connect surplus areas with deficit populations. Climate related production losses, rising food prices from inflation, and communal conflict disrupting livelihoods compound the challenge of ensuring food reaches those who need it regardless of production volumes.
Ghana Statistical Service data showed 13.3 million Ghanaians were food insecure by end of 2024, representing a 7.3 percent increase within one year. This means one of every three Ghanaians struggles to access enough nutritious food despite the country’s strong agricultural base and gradual economic recovery, illustrating how economic growth alone does not translate into nutritional security without functional food systems.
IMANI’s food insecurity analysis argues Ghana’s problem is not simply producing enough food but how efficiently systems work getting food to people’s plates. Fragmented agricultural policies, poor post harvest handling, and limited cold chain infrastructure create situations where even when farmers produce more, large portions go to waste or never reach markets in time.
The missing link between food production, nutrition, and access means Ghana’s substantial agricultural output fails to prevent widespread hunger. Policy disconnects see successful farming coexisting with malnutrition, surplus harvests accompanying food insecurity, and productive capacity undermined by distribution failures that waste resources while populations go hungry.
As December 5 approaches, government faces difficult choices about whether to take decisive action meeting farmer demands or risk the symbolic and practical consequences of the first nationwide Farmers’ Day boycott in Ghana’s history. The crisis tests whether political leadership can move beyond rhetoric about supporting agriculture into implementing systems that make farming economically viable for those who feed the nation.
The food glut exposes how Ghana’s agricultural transformation remains incomplete. Producing abundance represents necessary but insufficient progress toward food security and rural prosperity. Without infrastructure moving produce efficiently, borders protecting domestic markets fairly, cooperatives coordinating supply strategically, and processing industries absorbing surplus productively, increased yields become curses rather than blessings for farmers bearing the costs of government policy failures.
