Ahwoi addresses Food Security Summit in Rome

The Minister of Food and Agriculture, Kwesi Ahwoi  has called on World leaders attending the Summit on Food Security to share their national and regional experiences, to serve as lessons for developing countries to  build up specific strategies, plans and programmes  to ensure  a better future.

He noted that the summit was timely since it offers governments and stakeholders in agriculture the opportunity to deliberate and, commit themselves to measures that restore human dignity, by ensuring that each person gets access to food daily.

Addressing the World Food Security Summit in Rome, Mr. Ahwoi recalled that during the 1996 Summit on World Food Security world leaders pledged to reduce by half, the estimated 840 million people then suffering from hunger, by the year 2015.  

He noted however that, the target may not be attained as the number of hungry people is reported to have increased to over one billion. Of this number, about 900 million are reported to be in Asia and the Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa.

He said the effect of the recent food crisis experienced by most countries and in particular by developing countries has been devastating, as the economic crisis transmitted from the developed countries has further eroded the purchasing power of the average person in the developing world, leading many more people towards the hunger zone.

He enumerated some of the  constraints that Ghana's agricultural sector faces among others, as limited coping mechanisms to deal with the scourge of climate change,  inadequate capacity to adopt improved technologies for increased productivity and production,   poor access to financial resources as well as inadequate access to  national, regional and international markets.

Kwesi Ahwoi said despite the challenges and constraints; Ghana has made modest gains over the past years towards attaining both the Millennium Development Goal and the 1996 World Food Summit Goal of reducing the number of people suffering from hunger by half, by the year 2015.

He said in order not to lose the gains made over the years towards attaining food security, and to eventually eradicate hunger, Ghana will continue to implement on-going projects and programmes and, vigorously pursue the implementation of its newly-developed Medium Term Agricultural Sector Investment Plan, which elaborates interventions for agricultural growth and development.

The Minister noted that the declaration adopted at the summit, presents an enormous task on all stakeholders in agriculture and called for a concerted effort and total commitment from all, to eradicate hunger from the world.