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Ghana Spends Over $400 Million Annually on Tomato Imports- Agric Minister Reveals
Minister for Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku, has revealed that the country spends more than $400 million each year importing tomatoes from neighbouring Burkina Faso—despite having fertile lands and thousands of farmers.
He made the startling disclosure in Adom TV’s investigative documentary, Hunger After Plenty, produced by Jagri Boaz Binyinjom. The film exposes the contradictions in Ghana’s food system: a nation blessed with agricultural wealth but crippled by recurring food shortages and hunger.
“Despite the blessings God has given us—our fertile lands, water bodies, and hard-working farmers—we still face food shortages at certain times of the year. It is heartbreaking,” Mr Opoku said during an interview featured in the documentary.
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Hunger After Plenty captures the untold suffering of farmers, food vendors, and market women who bear the brunt of poor post-harvest management, weak storage infrastructure, and policy gaps. Scenes from the documentary show heaps of tomatoes and yams left to rot in fields, burnt, or discarded in marketplaces for lack of buyers or preservation systems.
The problem worsens between March and July, when seasonal shortages set in, triggering a dramatic spike in food prices across the country.
Experts interviewed in the film proposed interventions such as investment in cold storage, processing industries, buffer stock expansion, and policy reforms to bridge the gap between harvest abundance and lean-season scarcity.
A recent United Nations report cited in the documentary estimates that over 40 per cent of Ghana’s 34 million citizens go to bed hungry—a troubling statistic for a country once touted as the food basket of West Africa.
As the nation grapples with inflation, currency depreciation, and climate-related disruptions, the documentary poses a sobering question: How can a country with so much produce suffer so much hunger?
The call for urgent agricultural transformation has never been louder.
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