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Monday, October 6, 2025

Middlemen to blame for high food prices in urban areas – Agric Minister 

BusinessMiddlemen to blame for high food prices in urban areas – Agric Minister 

Eric Opoku, the Minister of Food and Agriculture, has said middlemen are to blame for the high food prices in urban areas.

According to the Agric Minister, middlemen between the farmers and the urban area buy cheaply from farmers and sell at ‘throat-cutting’ prices to the consumers.

Eric Opoku highlighted that farmers are currently selling food crops at lower prices than at the start of harvest season.

Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Wednesday, October 1, 2025, Eric Opoku explained, “When you go to the production point, the farmers are complaining that they were selling a truck of yams at GH¢7,000. When they started harvesting, it came down to GH¢4,000, and it is now hovering around GH¢3,000 and GH¢2,000 at the farm gate”.

Eric Opoku added, “We have some people also posing as middlemen between the farmers and urban areas, and they are engaging in profiteering, trying to enjoy abnormal profit. They buy cheaply from the farmers and sell at ‘throat-cutting’ prices to the consumers. The prices are better than before”.

“When you get to the mall, some of the food items are imported, and the prices cannot be compared to those in the local market now because the local ones are now cheaper than the imported ones,” he stressed.

He further added, “We, as a government, have decided to produce to feed Ghanaians; they must reciprocate our gesture by eating Ghana for us”.

Also, the Minister of Food and Agriculture credited Ghana’s bumper harvest across the country to the Mahama government’s Feed Ghana Programme.

Eric Opoku added, “The farmers in many parts of the country are complaining that they have produced in quantities beyond the market there, and they are not getting buyers. In Asunafo South, the youth who participated in the Feed Ghana Programme came to me and said that they have been harvesting the rice in quantities, and they are looking for a market.

“So, it is not the case that these are isolated cases. What is happening now is a nationwide bumper harvest that Ghana is experiencing,” he said.

The Agric Minister explained, “We launched the Feed Ghana Programme. The first leg of that programme is to campaign for mass participation in the programme. We campaigned that individual households must have backyard gardens, and SHS must have school farms.

“From the beginning of the campaign up to today, we have on record that 129 SHS are participating. We also campaigned for church and faith-based organisations to enter the programme. We have records of churches, and we have some records that have directed their branches with fertile lands to participate in the programme. Even state agencies are participating,” he noted.

Eric Opoku further noted that the agriculture sector is largely private-sector-led.

He explained, “We must admit that the agricultural space is private sector-led. So when the government creates that continual atmosphere, and they take advantage of some of them, certainly, they see some of these things.

The weather has also been favourable, so the results are a bumper harvest, which we anticipated at the beginning of the programme”.

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