Accra, Ghana//-It is a daily ritual to see young and aged farmers getting down to push vehicles and tricycles transporting their farm produce to the market centres due to poor roads.
“We have plenty of foodstuffs in this area. But whenever it rains, the road becomes impassable, making it difficult for us to cart our goods to the market centres to sell”, Kwaku Yeboah, a 65-year-old farmer, says.
Mr Yeaboh, who has been a cassava and maize farmer for the greater part of his life, does not believe that the government cares about farmers in the country.
“It is only during electioneering that politicians drive their big cars from Accra to Donkorkrom in the Afram Plains, North of the Eastern Region and other farming communities across the country to canvas for our votes. But after the elections, they don’t deliver on the good roads they promised us”, he laments.
While pointing at a muddy and bumpy road, Nana Esi Ama, another farmer, notes: “We smallholder farmers are the ones supplying foodstuffs to the people living in the urban areas. However, our roads are very bad”.
Because of the bad road network, we sometimes get involved in road accidents, leading to injuries and destruction of farm produce. Sometimes, some farmers and traders meet their untimely death in their attempt to transport the foodstuffs to feed their compatriots in the urban and peri-urban areas, Opanyin Adu adds.
“So, we will hold back food production if the challenges of the poor road network are not addressed on time”, they have threatened.
The above ordeals narrated by the smallholder farmers are not unique to them alone. Farmers across the country are facing the same challenges of poor roads in transporting their food commodities to feed the urban people.
The poor road network debacle is not only diversely affecting smallholder farmers alone. It is also affecting the traders, mostly market women who travel long distances from the capital city of Accra and other cities in the country to transport the foodstuffs to the cities where markets are available.
Rising food inflation
Coupled with these, as the market women travel over several kilometres to transport the farm produce to the cities, their costs of transportation also go up, which they intend to pass on to the consumers.
This is the reason why Ghana has been recording high food inflation since the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020.
For instance, food inflation rose to 61.0% in January 2023, from 59.7% recorded in December 2022, according to the January 2023 Consumer Price Index (CPI) released by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS).
It also indicated that inflation for locally produced items was 50.0%, while inflation for imported items inched up to 62.5%.
Consequently, the rising food prices pushed the CPI up.
Although transport inflation dropped for the first time in several months due to the recent reduction in fuel prices.
However, transport fares of commercial vehicles, which are used by more than 70% of the population, are still very high in the country.
Surging energy prices
Indeed, surging energy prices since early 2021 have lifted inflation directly through increases in prices of petrol, gas, and electricity, Oxford Economics says in its recent report titled-‘Energy Prices Effects On Inflation’.
They have also had large indirect effects on prices for services and non-energy goods, evident in the wide disparity between the inflation rates of service sector items with high energy intensity and low energy intensity.
Most discussion of the effects of the surge in energy prices on inflation has focused on the direct effects, notably through increases in prices of petrol, electricity, and gas for households.
Even in the UK, for instance, CPI energy prices, which include household spending on petrol, electricity, gas, and other fuels, and which comprise 6.7% of the CPI, have risen by 53% over the last year.
Hence, the direct contribution of the rise in energy prices to CPI inflation has been roughly 3.5ppts (i.e., 6.7% x 53%).
Similarly, the direct contribution of higher energy prices to Eurozone inflation has been roughly 2.4 ppts over the last year (9.5% weight, 26% year-on-year increase).
However, the surge in energy prices has also added substantially to CPI inflation through indirect effects that lift the inflation rates of non-energy items. This is evident in Ghana and other developing countries as well as in Europe.
For instance, restaurants use a lot of energy to prepare food, and for lighting and heating. The production of the food prepared in restaurants also uses a lot of energy, for example, to heat greenhouses and living quarters for animals, fuel for tractors, the transport of food to the restaurant and so forth.
So, when energy prices rise, restaurants’ costs rise, and this is likely to be reflected in higher prices for the food and drink sold by restaurants (counted as part of accommodation and food services in the CPI, and part of the service sector).
The story for other non-energy items in the CPI is broadly similar, though the size of the effect varies across sectors because of differences in the amounts of energy that firms use and because their inputs also have different energy intensities.
What can be done to address the poor road network?
One of the major ways the rising food prices in Ghana and other Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) countries could be stabilised is if the sub-region implements a comprehensive National Food Storage Policy.
To this end, the sub-region is working assiduously to implement and harmonise these policies, which are being adopted.
At a two-day National Technical Adoption workshop on National Food Storage Policy and Warehouse Procedure Manual held in May 2021 in Accra, an Agric Economist at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) explains that the policy is one of the surest ways of stabilizing food prices in Ghana and whole of the sub-region.
Dr Robert Aidoo explained: “If we have a policy of storage and distribution and we can store enough food and we can distribute it throughout the year, we are going to see stability in food prices.
Because if you look at the prices of maize when we are in the peak period of maize production, prices are so low.
Farmers complain all the time that they cannot break even. But when we get to the lean season, prices are also so high, and consumers also complain because they cannot afford it”.
Dr Aido, who is the lead consultant for the policy, added: “So if we have storage facilities, what we do is that when there is excess in the market, you mop it and store.
When the market is scarce, you bring this one onto the market, and then prices will be stable. So that consumers are happy, and producers (farmers) are also happy”.
“So, I think that if the government pushes up the National Food Storage Policy and pushes resources behind it, and we can implement it, in the next three to five years, we should see a lot of stability in the prices of food in the country”.
Touching on how the policy can help address food insecurity in the country, he notes that some households in Ghana suffer food insecurity in some parts of the year. That is what the policy, which was adopted by the technical committee and political engagement, seeks to correct.
“Again, if we want to get the most from the population, the population has to have food to eat to enable them to become very strong so that they can contribute to the development of the country”, according to Dr Aidoo.
Also, present and successive governments have prioritised the construction of roads in food-producing areas of the country to ease the burden farmers, market women and other users go through smoothly.
As the Minister for Roads and Highways, Kwesi Amoak-Atta, says, several roads linking farming communities to the urban areas are being worked on, while others are also being upgraded to make them motorable.
Presenting the 2023 budget to Parliament on 24th November 2022, the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, adds that the Critical Regional and Inter-Regional Road Projects initiated in 2019 are at various stages of completion.
He mentions that the Upgrading of Golokwati-Wli Road, Nsuta – Beposo, Lot 3, rehabilitation of Nkonya Wrumpong – Kwamikrom, partial reconstruction of Bawjiase – Adeiso, and resealing of Tamale – Salaga Road – Lot have been completed.
Also, progress on Navrongo-Naga, Wa-Bulenga-Yaala; Salaga – Ekumdipe – Kpandai, Kpandai – Nkanchina (10.8km); Atebubu – Kwame Danso; Anwiankwanta – Obuasi; New Abirem – Ofoasekuma; Sefwi Wiawso – Akontombra; and Akrodie – Sayereso roads, among others, have achieved significant progress, according to the 2023 budget statement.
Bottom line
Indeed, agriculture is a very crucial part of development and poverty reduction in Ghana and other developing countries.
In that regard, agriculture, especially farming activity, depends on good roads for the transportation of the farm produce to the market centres in the urban parts of the country.