Let us harness ginger potential says National President

The National President, Ginger Growers, Processors and Marketers Association (GGOMAN), Dr. Florence Edward 

The National President, Ginger Growers, Processors and Marketers Association (GGOMAN), Dr. Florence Edward has posited that the global position of Nigerian ginger must be a task for all levels of Government and private stakeholders to protect against stiff competition from other nations.

This is one of the great concerns expressed by Dr. Florence Edward early this week to Food Farm News saying effort must be stepped up to galvanize the value chains of the produce by both federal and states government for its dollar potential to the entire nation in terms of financial freedom to the individual farmers and foreign exchange earning to the nation.

Edwards who became the National President of the Association through the 2012 congress held at Kagarko local government of Kaduna state said GGOMAN is already making frantic effort to build a processing plant for organically produced ginger for local and international consumptions, adding that about 32 states of the federation with over 100,000 farmers are in the production of the product for export earnings.

She said that ''Since i became the National President of this association, we have been able to move forward the production of ginger through expansion to over 32 states where training are given to farmers on best agronomics practices with the great positive impact that must be sustained by the government through consistent productivity support at all the value chains of production, processing and marketing particularly using organic productivity methods’’.

Dr. Edwards extolled CBN for enrolling the produce into its Anchor Borrower Programme (ABP) as over 40,000 farmers had been captured for the purpose, saying this is the kind of support the Government can give to ensure increased productivity to meet ginger’s demand internationally and locally.

According to her ‘‘the appearance of Covid-19 pandemic of last year has increased the demand for Nigeria ginger in the other nations of the world. Our ginger is in high demand abroad, the reason being the most spiced ginger in the world’'. 

The national president advised the government to double up its effort towards ensuring that Nigeria maintains her leadership position in the production of the crop because other countries of the world are also making frantic efforts to overtake the market opportunity.

Apart from the economic impact of the produce, Edwards emphasized the health benefits of ginger saying ‘’ it is used to help fight infections, lower blood sugar and reduce heart risk. It is also good for making cosmetics, use in the brewery and used by food industry’’.