'Ghana Holds Potential For Vegetable Production'

Vegetable Production

The Programme Leader of GhanaVeg, Mr Joep van den Broek, has said the country could become self-sufficient in vegetable production when the public works with the private sector as stakeholders for a year-round irrigated production.

He said it would be a win-win for both sides when the public sector developed infrastructure and attracted the private sector to come in with other logistics and infrastructure within the value chain.

“Ultimately, a lot of opportunities for Ghana lie in irrigated production throughout the country, from the south, the middle belt and the north. The country is nestled around water bodies but with very little irrigation. With irrigation, you can do off-season production and meet local demand and stop the importation of onions, tomatoes and other vegetables.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic at the 9th GhanaVeg Business Platform in Accra, the programme leader said the country had a perfect climate for the production of vegetables such as onions, chillies and tomatoes, and that coupled with the abundance of water, the country had all going for it to become a major player in the production of vegetables.

A Dutch trade mission, comprising leading vegetable sector companies, was in the country to explore market and investment opportunities.

GhanaVeg, which created the platform to bring players in the industry together to touch base on trends and developments, is a four-year strategic response (2014-2017) by the Netherlands to develop a sustainable and internationally competitive vegetable sector in the country to contribute to inclusive economic growth.

It is a bilateral support by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands committed to developing and promoting commercial vegetables sector in the country. Selecting a sector to support was research-based which proved the country’s vast potential.

There are enormous market opportunities across the world for vegetables, with the Netherlands alone holding about 14 billion euros in value. In 2013 for instance, it imported 4.6 billion euros worth of fresh fruits and vegetables from 107 countries and exported 7.1 billion to 150 countries.

Ghana, where the need to consume more vegetable is catching on with the population imports various vegetables from the Netherlands and neighboring countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali and La Cote d’Ivoire.

Mr Broek cited VegPro as a good example of how the government, under the Millennium Challenge Account grant, developed an irrigation project at Kpong at the Left Bank of Akuse Kpong Piped Irrigation Water Supply (KPIWS) Project for VegPro Ghana Limited.

A member of the trade mission, Bejo Seeds, visited a carrot farm at Mampong which produces 10 tons. But the seeds company representatives believed that with their intervention and further linkages with other solutions providers in the Netherlands, the company should be able to easily scale up yields to 40 tons.

The companies in the mission also included Unitherm, a cold chain provider; mechanization equipment providers, Kramer and Matrex, and was led by Mr Peter Verbaas, the director of the Dutch fruit and vegetables wholesale association, FrugiVenta.

GhanaVeg also presented findings on its private extension service study, which examined the three options of working with input suppliers to provide extension support to farmers.

These involved forming study clubs of farmers who share experience, knowledge and ideas and solve common challenges together, and a third option of using more consultancy services delivered by experts with vegetables as their specialization.

“We see great prospects in the third option. There are already a number of good agricultural consultancy companies in Ghana who are active in all kinds of sectors, including fruits and vegetables. What we would like to do with them is to see how they can expand their scope to training small scale farmers, groups of farmers and outgrower schemes with the latest state-of-the-art knowledge in vegetable production,” Mr Broek explained.

Working with smallholder farmers is a major requirement within GhanaVeg’s mandate, which is aimed at encouraging inclusive development.