The public teacher trainee feeding crisis has taken a sharper turn. The Conference of Principals of Colleges of Education (PRINCOF) has announced that, starting Monday, June 16, 2025, government-funded Colleges of Education will now provide just one meal a day to students, a drastic reduction from the previous three.
According to PRINCOF, the decision stems from mounting cost pressures that have rendered the current model financially unsustainable.
But this, for many, is more than a budgetary adjustment. It exposes a fundamental question: What happens when the state can no longer uphold a key incentive for attracting and retaining future teachers?
For Dr. Frank Ackah, Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Coast’s Department of Crop Science, the way forward lies in turning every College of Education into a self-reliant food production hub, through compulsory school farms.
Speaking to The High Street Journal, Dr. Ackah described the current model as unsustainable, warning that relying on the government to provide food indefinitely is no longer viable.
“If the government is actually spending money to feed these students… then training colleges should be made to have a school farm,” he said, calling for a radical policy shift that builds long-term food self-sufficiency into teacher education.
Dr. Ackah argued that most of the 47 Colleges of Education are located in semi-rural areas with access to land, and this land could be used to grow cassava, plantain, maize, and vegetables, items that make up a significant portion of trainee diets.
Recalling his own upbringing around a colleague of education, he explained that farming in training institutions is not a new idea, just one Ghana abandoned too soon.
“They had an oil palm plantation and produced their own oil… they were eating food from their own backyard.”
In his view, the government should stop disbursing feeding funds in bits and instead inject capital into the colleges to develop structured agricultural systems, even if it means the government pulls back after two years.
“Give them the money now to set up tractors, seeds, farmhands, then stop feeding them gradually. It’s more sustainable.”
He suggested that even if funds are tight, the Ministry of Education can partner with donor agencies to supply inputs instead of cash.
Dr. Ackah stressed that this plan must be mandatory. Voluntary implementation won’t work because not every principal will prioritize food planning. In his words:
“Every College should be told: show us your plan.”
He also proposed incentives for performance, such as rewarding the best-performing farm-based colleges or tying it into college rankings.
In the meantime, he said the state must use national production schemes like Buffer Stock, the Youth in Agriculture programme, or even prison farms, to supply ingredients to affected institutions, at least temporarily.
Dr. Ackah was clear that one meal a day may help the state save money, but not sufficient to feed the student teachers.
But in his view, the real tragedy is that Ghana has the land, the know-how, and the institutional network to feed its teacher trainees, yet lacks the will to act.
“Government cannot continue to buy,” he said. “But government can invest in production. That’s the way forward.”
