He explained that the Akufo-Addo government only changed the name of the programme when it assumed office.
Mahama said this when he addressed the people of Dormaa in the Bono Region as part of his ‘Thank You’ tour.
“Before this government came in, we had an arrangement with Canada. They were giving us funding for agriculture because they had realised that it was the sector creating more jobs,” he said, as quoted by Myjoyonline.
“When they came into office, they named it PFJ. It was originally a programme that we were working on. They just came and continued it.”
The Planting for Food and Jobs programme was officially launched in 2017 as one of the Akufo-Addo government’s flagship programmes geared towards maintaining food security in the country.
Mahama, however, believes the programme has failed and Ghana is not far from a famine in the coming years.
“Planting for Food and Jobs has failed. There will be famine in Ghana next year. The Canadian funding has been exhausted and we need to find alternative funding to sustain the programme but there is no money at the Ministry of Finance.
“Prices for food crops are going up astronomically… one of my siblings is a farmer. He is telling me this year there is no fertiliser.
“He had to buy his own fertiliser and a bag of fertiliser is expensive now. He normally cultivates 300 acres of maize but this year he had to reduce it to 80 acres. It shows that there is going to be hunger because the PFJ has failed,” he added.