Govt’s barcode innovation for fertilizers tackles theft

Government’s decision to introduce the bar code system for its fertilizer subsidy programme is gaining grounds, according to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA).

Some agric-based thin tanks and institutions have said the new system will cut down on corruption, improve farm productivity and the economy at large. This, they say, will have a ripple effect on food security, currency stability through import substitution.

MoFA has been highly commended for the introduction of this bar code system as a move to show accountability and also reduce misappropriation of the nation’s resources.

MoFA introduced the new electronic coding and traceable in a bid to monitor the government’s fertilizer subsidy programme and farming inputs for farmers.

The new service requires every farmer who wants to benefit from the subsidy have to be biometrically registered but for farmers who have already registered can have access to purchase the fertilizer.

Before any purchase is made an agent at the retail shop would take the fingerprint of the farmer and match it with the code on the bag of the fertilizer.

The code identifies the region, district zone, fertilizer type, source, distributor and details of the retailer. It will be able to track all fertilizer bags and inputs from suppliers all the way to end user which is the farmer.

The new technology is expected to eliminate fertilizer smuggling in the country, as subsidize fertilizers would now have a special code like the tax stamp introduced by the Ghana Revenue Authority.

This traceability technique is the most affordable off-net and real-time technology to improve the service and deliver value for money platform. Retailers will be given a set of scannable codes to label their inputs based on the quantity of allocation.

This new high efficiency and traceable fertilizer subsidy management system is to ensure that farmers who have registered biometrically benefit from the fertilizer subsidy by the government.

 MoFA is currently deploying about 2600 agents to all fertilizer retail shops in the country to register farmer biometrically.

Agriculture experts say, MoFA and the Planting for Food and Jobs should be the critical focus for the government, since it promotes affordable food for the children under the free SHS, good source of raw material for one district one factory and also support the country’s balance of payment through import substitution.

With further support to MoFA, the country could record another food basket surplus as it happened last year.

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