NKORANZA CASHEW FARMERS CALL FOR INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT

Page 9 (features), Nov 13, 2007

By Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah
THE cashew tree is said to be an air purifier. It does so by reducing the carbon concentration in the atmosphere. It contains two per cent vegetable protein, which is comparable to soya beans, groundnuts, beef and chicken. The kennels have an even higher percentage of unsaturated fatty acids while its apple is also rich in Vitamin C, Calcium and Iron.
It is, therefore understandable that the Ministry of Food and Agriculture has listed cashew among the crops to be supported, not only for wealth creation and poverty alleviation but also for improving the nutritional well-being of the people of Ghana.
This is what the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Ernest Akubuor Debrah, stated in his keynote address at the opening of the National Cashew Week Celebration in Accra early this year.
The minister also stated that to hasten the growth of the Cashew Industry, his ministry through the Cashew Development project, had packaged some strategies that would enhance extension delivery to farmers and processors.
Sadly enough, these “strategic packages”, including provision of improved planting material, the development and distribution of bulletins on improved crop technologies and good horticultural practices to assist farmers improve on yields and quality nuts, credit schemes and well structured programmes for capacity building of key players in the cashew industry, have not reached the poor Cashew farmers of Nkoranza.

The infamous bush fires of the middle 1980s, which affected the cocoa industry, coupled with the tumbling world market prices, compelled the government, through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to begin attractive promotions of alternative cash crops to farmers.
That is how the cashew farming fever came to catch up with farmers in Nkoranza with great expectations. And were it not for this prompt response to the call, lands located in the transition zone between the forested south and the savannah north of the Brong Ahafo Region would have been without cover.
The response was also the farmer’s immense contribution towards salvaging the devastated environment, as it was a way of reforestation.
What the ministry said in promoting the cashew industry then, and what it is promising farmers today are all a mirage.
Now the Nkoranza cashew farmers are hard hit and disappointed by the situation where the total lack of state support in terms of extension service and price regulation seem to bring the farmers’ labour to a venture of little returns.
The interplay of poor planting materials, poor horticultural practices and poor disease/ pest control results in poor yields in terms of quality and quantity, thus attracting give-away prices from foreign buying companies which callously dictate the price, without providing basic marketing inputs like jute sacks. One such foreign buying company is Romo Cashew Company Limited, of Indian origin.
Out of desperation the Association of Nkoranza Cashew Farmers was compelled to apply to the BUSAC Fund to enable them advocate a more concrete statal technical support and price regulation.
Mr Idris Wiredu, the Executive Director of Network for Advocacy and Development Alternatives (NADA), the service provider that the association hired for the BUSAC funded advocacy action, told this writer after he had visited some farmers on their farms that he was highly impressed with the hard work of the farmers in spite of their constraints.
One farmer, popularly called Obaa Yaa, who owns over 100 acres told Mr Wiredu that her source of planting material was her own farm, and that she learnt how to do pruning by watching it done on TV on cocoa farms.
Nana Osei Kwadwo, the chairman of the association and a regional award winner for cashew farming, also told a similar story. His farm needs urgent pruning .
Mr Wiredu said when he spoke with the Nkoranza Deputy District Director of MOFA, Mr B.B. Kudor, he cited the inadequate field staff situation as one of the reasons for their inability to help farmers.
The performance of the cashew industry in the agricultural sector was debunked, in April this year, by the then Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry, Private Sector Development and Presidential Special Initiatives, Mr Kwadwo Affram Asiedu, at the National Cashew Week Celebration in Accra on the theme: “Cashing in on Cashew”. He said that Ghana’s production levels currently were a “sell-out” while the potential remained huge.
Ghana could derive a lot from the cashew industry if cashew farmers are given a better deal like their counterparts in the cocoa industry. We cannot continue to depend solely on cocoa and the earlier something was done to enable the country cash in on cashew, the better.