As some produce in an Accra market has doubled in price over the past year, a food sovereignty advocate says importing produce must end.

Onion seller Iddi said his product, imported from Niger,last year sold for 20 cedis a basket, this year it is 40 cedis.While pepper seller Esi said 1 kilo of pepper last year was 10 cedis, it had doubled to 20 cedis this year.

Grace, a cucumber seller, said six months ago her product sold three for 2 cedis, whereas now they sold three for 10 cedis, more than doubling in price.

“The price has shot up because there is no rain. The farmers are forced to use pumping machines to water the crops.”

Tomato seller Rita said tomatoes had doubled over the year from 15 cedis to 30 cedis now.

Rita said the tomatoes came from Burkina Faso, and believed the distance the produce travelled attributed to the increase.

However, secretary of Food Sovereignty Ghana Kofi Agyei said the increase ran deeper than weather and fuel costs.

“Prices have increased due to the fact that some multi international agri business organisations have wrongly and negatively influenced governmental policies.”

There was too much imported produce allowed in Ghana, which had a negative effect on local farmers. He believed multinational agriculture organisations were to blame and the government needed to do more to fix the situation.

“Instead of empowering and establishing policies that will elevate local production, they are not doing it, they are rather bringing in foods produced outside.

“It is a two way affair, they are destroying the local production while they are making the few who produce in the country compete with foreign crops.”

Local farmers were not able to match the masses of crops coming from outside Ghana, he said.

He feared the multinationals will “hijack the production system”.

“They are creating an atmosphere where production is low [in Ghana] and prices are increasing.”

Agyei called for the power to be put back in the hands of the growers here, instead of Ghana relying on imported produce.

He said the solution was supporting farmers to produce more, and did not think the weather was the main reason prices were increasing.

More dams and better use of water bodies in Ghana would help local farmers, Agyei said.

He said everything Ghana had in the markets could be easily produced here in Ghana. He was particularly concerned with expensive, imported produce sold in mall supermarkets.