Gambling With Food Security

Pharaoh had a weird dream and wanted someone to translate the dream to him. All the wise men and magicians in Egypt could not translate the dream until someone introduced Joseph to the Pharaoh.

In short, Joseph told the king that the dream meant there will be seven years of abundance of food in the land of Egypt to be followed by another seven years of lean season.

He told the king that there will be famine in the land of Egypt, so there was the need to gather and store grains during these seven years of bounty, when famine did strike, there will be enough food for the people. Pharaoh bought the idea which saved Egyptians and other nations.

Pharaoh's dream and the translation of the dream by Joseph is relevant today as it was in those days. Nobody can convince me that maize is not the staple food of Ghana. Just mention any food which is highly patronised by a cross section of the people of Ghana and you cannot end without mentioning maize.

Ga Kenkey, Fante Kenkey, Fomfom, Tuozaafi, Hausa Koko, Mmore Koko, Banku, Pakapaka, Etsew, Adibi, Nkyewie, Anasodwe, Nkyekeraa, Akpele, Laale, etc. are all made from maize. Thankfully, wherever you plant maize in Ghana, it does well.

In the early seventies, when General Acheampong was the Head of State of Ghana, he introduced the Operation Feed Yourself programme which led to bumper harvest of maize and other food crops in the country. When Acheampong over threw he government of Professor Busia, he told the world that Ghana will not pay any debt owed to countries (Yentua Regime).

When things started to get bad for the country, bread became a luxury because the country could not get foreign currency to import wheat, which is the raw material of bread. The ingenuity of Ghanaian bakers was brought to bear when they started to produce cornbread.

No wonder the sages say necessity is the mother of invention. The cornbread caught on so well with the people that gradually Ghanaians came to eat more cornbread than wheat bread. In fact, many Ghanaians could not differentiate between cornbread and brown bread which was made from wheat.

Cornbread was heavier and thicker and more delicious than wheat bread, and Ghanaians gradually became hooked to it. Boarding schools also patronised the cornbread. Instead of concentrating on the production of cornbread to safe scarce foreign exchange, Ghana resorted to the importation of wheat when things started to get better, economically. We missed an opportunity to make cornbread a national delicacy and a staple diet.

I am recounting this history because of what is happening in Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine are the world's leading producers of wheat. Because of the war and the numerous sanctions slapped on the face of Russia, wheat has become scarce and costly. We have to rethink and go back to the days of cornbread.

Remember I wrote in this column some time ago that when a dog loses one leg, it changes its way of walking and running. If we start eating cornbread, maize farmers will profit and the youth will be attracted to maize farming instead of going to the big cities to find none existing menial jobs.

We always talk of food buffer zones whiles silos lie empty in all the maize producing areas. At Nkoranza in the Bono East region, we have silos that can contain six thousand metric tons of maize. Similar silos are located in Techiman, Kintampo, Atebubu and some towns in the Ahafo and Ashanti regions, as well as maize producing areas in the Northern Regions.

Since the Ghana Food Distribution Cooperation, the managers of the silos became defunct, no government ever tried to make good use of these silos.

If Egypt could store grains for future consumption, I see no reason why we cannot find a strategic investor to take up the job of buying and storing our maize in time of bumper harvest. The 1983 famine nearly brought the country on her kneels simply because we failed to think ahead.

Even the ant which saves food for the rainy day was wiser than us. When we came face to face with the devastating famine of 1983, we had to import yellow corn from the US to survive when we could have stored maize for many years like the US did. After the famine, we went back to sleep as we continued to produce, eat the products and refuse to store some for tomorrow.

Now that climate change is knocking on our doors, we must be proactive before we are taken unaware. Niger is not a maize producing country but they eat maize-based food than us. To make the best out of the worse situation that they have found themselves, they buy maize from Ghana and other countries in West Africa and store them for the future.

In fact, Niger has the largest maize market in the West Africa sub region even though they don't produce maize. We don't think ahead as a nation.

Between 1973 and 1974, fishermen along our coasts experienced a never to be forgotten bumper catch of herrings and other species of fishes. Fishermen always returned from their fishing expeditions with boat-loads of fishes. Because we had very few cold stores in those days, fishmongers became tied of smoking the fishes, which forced the fisher folks to sail back to high sea to jettison their catch for lack of space to store them.

In less than one year, the fish stock in our sea mysteriously depleted and fishermen returned from their fishing expedition with empty boats. That was when Ghanaians started to eat a type of tasteless fish called 'Ewura Efua', which also got depleted in the sea in no time. It was like going from boom to bust. We never learnt a lesson from that tragedy which opened our underbelly.

The Minister of Food and Agriculture must form a team of experts to brainstorm on how to save the situation of storage. We must not wait for a catastrophe to strike before we start complaining and apportioning blames.

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah established the University of Science and Technology for a reason. Today, KNUST cannot even invent a technology which can help store plantain for a year without going rotten. Science and Technology have given way to Law faculties and faculty of “Dondology.”

We must revisit the blueprint of the university like the way Mr. Agyekum Kufuor did with the blueprint which was drawn more than one hundred years ago to construct the Bui Dam. Successful leaders think ahead.

Planting for Food and Jobs, yes, but saving food for the rainy day should be at the center stage. Is my very good friend Owusu Afriyie Akoto listening to this Earth Angel Gabriel who is delivering the message of salvation from the firmament?

A word to the wise is in the North!!! Don't laugh because I am serious and agitated. A physician specialist once told me that a stick of cigar a day releases tension and makes one feel good. Imagine what I am doing today on my maize farm as I light up my Havana. Who say man no dey?

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From Eric Bawah