- Sir Sam Jonah’s Agricultural Warning: Food Security Cannot Be Built on Campaigns Alone
In Ghana’s agricultural debate, the most unsettling question may not be whether the country can produce more food. It is why earlier gains were allowed to disappear.
That was the challenge Sir Sam Jonah put before an audience in Accra on November 13, recalling Operation Feed Yourself, the nationwide food-production campaign launched in 1972.
The programme, he argued, showed that Ghana could mobilise farmers, communities and public institutions to reduce reliance on imported food. Its collapse, he said, was not proof that the effort had failed. It was evidence that success without continuity can be lost.
“The tragedy of Operation Feed Yourself is not that it failed. It is that it worked, and we let it go,” he said.
The distinction matters. Agricultural programmes are often judged by their announcements, targets or first harvests. Jonah’s argument invites a harder test: whether the infrastructure, incentives and political commitment that make production possible endure after the initial campaign ends.
Operation Feed Yourself was more than a call for citizens to plant crops. Jonah described a coordinated effort involving traditional authorities and communities, supported by radio broadcasts and information vans.
Farm tools, fertiliser and seeds were sold at heavily subsidised prices. Feeder roads helped move produce to market, while investment in water infrastructure included projects at Dawenya, Asutsuare and the Tono dam in the north.
The programme’s reported results were striking. Jonah said rice imports fell to zero in 1975 and again in 1976, while farmers in northern Ghana exported rice and tomatoes to Upper Volta. Tamale, he recalled, became known as “The Rice City”.
Those claims offer a powerful historical reference point, but they should not be reduced to a simple prescription to recreate the past. Ghana’s agricultural economy, population and markets have changed.
The relevant lesson is less that a campaign from the 1970s can be copied wholesale than that production responds to a chain of practical conditions: access to inputs, dependable water, roads to markets and sustained public attention.
When one link is missing, the effect can travel through the entire system. Subsidised seeds or fertiliser may raise output, but without reliable transport farmers can struggle to sell at a price that covers costs.
Irrigation can reduce exposure to rainfall, but only if farmers can access and maintain the infrastructure. A campaign can encourage participation, but participation becomes difficult to sustain if producers face uncertain markets or support that changes with each administration.
Jonah put Ghana’s annual food import bill at about US$2 billion, with rice and chicken accounting for a significant share. That figure, as he presented it, sharpens the economic case for agricultural investment. Money spent importing food is money that does not support domestic production, processing, logistics and jobs.
Yet import substitution is not an automatic win: local production must be reliable, affordable and commercially viable. Replacing imports with domestic supply requires more than political ambition; it requires a system that can deliver consistent volumes and quality.
The broader question, then, is whether renewed investment would be designed to last. A government can announce a production drive, but farmers and businesses make decisions across seasons and years.
They need to know whether water projects will be completed, feeder roads maintained, inputs available when planting begins and buyers present when crops are ready. If those conditions are not dependable, private investment is likely to remain cautious and farmers may be reluctant to expand.
There is also a governance test in the history Jonah recalled. Operation Feed Yourself drew in traditional authorities and local communities, not only central government.
That suggests agricultural policy may work best when national priorities are connected to local knowledge and responsibility. Communities understand their land, water and production constraints; public institutions can provide infrastructure and coordination. Neither side can substitute for the other.
But coordination must be matched by accountability. Large programmes can absorb public resources without producing lasting results if projects are poorly maintained or benefits are difficult to measure. The relevant measures should go beyond how much money is allocated or how many inputs are distributed.
They should include whether yields improve, whether farmers can reach markets, whether domestic supply becomes more dependable and whether import reliance falls without making food more expensive for households.
Jonah’s criticism of successive governments also points to a political weakness: agriculture can be treated as a campaign priority rather than a long-term national undertaking. Infrastructure takes time to build and maintain, while governments face pressure to show quick results.
That tension can encourage short-term interventions over the less visible work of irrigation, roads, storage and institutional continuity.
The story of Operation Feed Yourself, as Jonah presented it, is therefore not simply a tale of past achievement. It is a warning about reversals.
If Ghana could move from importing rice to exporting it, then later allow that capacity to fade, the central policy question is not only how to raise output again. It is how to make agricultural gains resilient to changes in political leadership, funding priorities and market conditions.
That requires resisting the temptation to treat food security as a single-sector problem. Farmers need inputs, but also water and roads. Processors need dependable supplies. Traders need functioning markets.
Consumers need affordable food. A policy that benefits one group while leaving the rest of the chain underdeveloped may increase production temporarily without building a durable food economy.
Jonah’s intervention ultimately asks Ghana to judge its agricultural ambitions by what survives. The achievement of producing enough rice to eliminate imports for two years would be remarkable on its own. The more consequential test is whether such progress can be maintained, expanded and converted into lasting livelihoods and lower exposure to imported food.
The lesson of Operation Feed Yourself may be that mobilisation can change what a country produces. The lesson of its decline is that mobilisation alone is not enough. Investment must endure long enough for farmers to trust it, businesses to build around it and consumers to feel its effects.
