Former President John Dramani Mahama says, due to the abysmal performance of the Akufo-Addo Government on the agricultural sector, the country might face severe famine in the coming year.

Mr Mahama prediction was based on the non-materialisation of the government’s flagship programme “Planting for Food and Jobs”.

He said: “If we don’t take care next year there would be famine in Ghana because planting for food and jobs programme had failed.”

The former president while being interviewed by a local radio station in the Bono region as part of his “thank you tour yesterday”, made this prediction.

The 2020 presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) indicated that the programme, which the incumbent government made Ghanaians believe, was a novel idea to create opportunities, especially for the youths, was a sham.

According to him, it was a programme that was been funded by the Canadian Government that the Akufo-Addo administration took over from him and made it seems like something new.

He explained that the Canadian Government provided the support after having identified that the agriculture sector is capable of employing more people than any other sector of the Ghanaian economy.

“So they supported us with some funds to embark on agriculture programmes. We were pursuing the programme until we were voted out of power,” he said. “The programme has sunk through the government’s fingers without making best out of it meanwhile the funding had ceased”.

The government, therefore, through the Ministry of Finance is expected to mobilise funds internally to push the programme running but he said: “The Finance Ministry’s coffer is dry.”

Unfortunately, failure on the part of the government to sustain the planting for food and jobs has had a downstream effect on commodity prices – food price on the market is not stable and rising astronomically or increasing by double fold, he added.

 Moreover, the government’s fertiliser subsidy programme has also collapsed, giving farmers no other option than purchase agrochemical out-of-pocket, which many cannot afford, due to the exorbitant cost.

Mr Mahama also blamed the dying poultry industry on the government, saying that the high cost of fertiliser had compelled a sibling, a farmer, of his to reduce a 300-acre maize farm to 80 acres, hence many farmers cannot afford feed for their birds.

He said the poultry industry is dying because farmers are unable to break even, as a result of the high cost of feed and the continuous threat by imported frozen birds.

By Adelaide Oforiwa