Consumers of locally produced rice will soon be able to identify quality products by a unique certification logo. This was the promise by President of Ghana Rice Inter-professional Body, (GIBA) Imoro Amoro at a sensitisation workshop in Accra for rice farmers.

Although there are existing standards by the Ghana Standards Authority for local rice, they have never been enforced.

The enforcement of standards is what Mr Amoro believed will improve farming methods and ultimately provide consumers with good quality rice.

He traced the root cause of comparatively low consumption of rice with “perceived variable quality” and said that high imports of rice was largely as a result of a “significant quality gap”.

Mr Amoro said certification of local rice is the next step to cure the problem of poor quality. He revealed that from a consumer point of view, quality rice is a function of "taste, cleanliness, length of grain and price".

Meanwhile, Prudence Asamoah-Bonti of the Ghana Standards Authority has said interest groups will review and enforce the standards.

GRIB is an association of rice farmers, millers, processors, agrochemical input dealers, and traders. The Association aims at identifying constraints, promoting market, price negotiations and profit sharing among stakeholders.

GRIB now has about 10,000 members.