Northern Ghana drought: We did not foresee current situation – Agric Ministry

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) has acknowledged that it did not anticipate the severity of the ongoing drought currently affecting northern Ghana.

Farms in the region have been severely impacted by over a month and a half of drought, prompting farmers to call for urgent government intervention.

Tanko Bagbara, Head of Public Relations at MoFA, stated that while the ministry has been collaborating closely with the Ghana Meteorological Agency, they did not foresee the drought escalating to its current devastating levels.

“The Ministry [of Food and Agriculture] over the period has worked closely with the meteorological station and we do heed their advice, but we did not foresee this and I do not want to blame anybody because all I know is that rain-feed agriculture is something you cannot predict naturally to the latter,” Mr. Tanko told Newsmen in Accra

MoFA’s PRO also disclosed that names of affected farmers are currently being collected pending the government’s intervention.

“The Ministry has gone to work and as we speak, we are still collecting data, so far, we have eight regions affected and the latest is the Upper East region and Northern region and for the past one and a half months, they have been affected by drought and the Ministry is collating this data that will inform a decision going forward.

“We all heard the President give a hint that the government will soon announce some interventions to mitigate the drought situation.

“Certainly, it is going to affect food security because a lot of farms have been lost completely and even if it rains today, there is no way we can recover those farms and so the ministry is putting data together and very soon the government will announce some interventions.”