The Ghana Tomato Self-Sufficiency Initiative (GHATSI) kicked off this week in Anloga, Volta Region, spanning 35 districts across 10 regions. The Ministry of Food and Agriculture is rolling out the programme alongside private partner FarmMate Limited.

The stakes are steep: Ghana consumes roughly 805,000 metric tonnes of tomatoes annually but produces only about 510,000 tonnes locally, leaving a nearly 300,000-tonne shortfall filled largely by imports. Compounding the problem, Ministry figures show close to a third of homegrown tomatoes, around 153,000 metric tonnes, spoil after harvest before ever reaching consumers.

Government officials say the programme's first phase alone could create more than 150,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Minister of Food and Agriculture Eric Opoku framed the initiative as an attempt to fix a broken cycle rather than simply grow more produce. "We experience scarcity at one point and waste at another," he said, pointing to poor coordination linking farms, storage, processing and markets.

Opoku said the programme is built to knit together irrigation, farm inputs, financing, insurance, processing and guaranteed buyers into one continuous chain — with an eventual goal of scaling annual output to 400,000 tonnes from more than 40,000 acres, including tomato purée and other processed products.

At the centre of GHATSI is a financing package worth an estimated GH¢20,000 per acre, covering land preparation, soil testing, inputs, technical support and insurance. Farmers repay the financing after harvest through a structured off-take deal, with contracted buyers purchasing directly from them — a model designed to guarantee both cash flow and a market.

Each participating farm will also carry multi-peril crop insurance worth GH¢50,000 per acre against unforeseen losses, plus a pension scheme that sets aside a share of post-harvest income for farmers' retirement.

On infrastructure, the government has committed to rehabilitating all 22 existing irrigation facilities in the Volta Region by the end of 2027 to support dry-season farming, alongside deploying two new excavators to the Volta Regional Coordinating Council to dredge lagoons, streams and rivers for irrigation.