ABOUT four weeks ago, there were desperate cries from tomato farmers in certain parts of the country who could not sell their produce. There was prompt reaction from Trusty Foods Company, an agro-processing firm based in Tema, when it offered to purchase the produce directly from the farmers.
That was commendable. There was some comfort in that offer, even though it did not meet the full aspirations of the farmers. But for how long shall our farmers continue to rely on such sporadic and unpredictable gestures from individuals and firms to sustain their business?
The complaints of all the team players in the tomato industry are varied and multifaceted, but they collectively raise the question of our sincere commitment to agricultural development.
From the Upper East Region came the plea for credit facilities. Tomato farmers in that part of the country complained severely of lack of credit facilities which, they claimed, were undermining their operations.
According to them, the high cost of land preparation and of fertiliser and the non-availability of improved seeds are affecting their production capacity and consequently reducing their incomes and thus exposing them to poverty and hunger.
The problem, they claimed, began way back in the late 1980s when support for the agriculture sector was withdrawn as part of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). The resultant reduction in local production opened the floodgates for the importation of tomato and tomato paste into the country.
The solution, they believe, lies in the Agricultural Credit Fund which will open access to credit facilities for farmers. The bill for this fund is still at the gestation stage and the farmers are calling for expeditious action to activate the fund to bring some relief to the farmers.
Until the government intervention comes, most of the farmers have to rely on the tomato queens, who are into big-time tomato business, to prefinance their production costs. That also means the queens have a bigger say in the price of the produce at harvest time.
While the Upper East farmers are lamenting production costs, there is another group with a different problem altogether. These are tomato farmers in the southern part of the country who could not find market for their produce.
From Keta, Tegbi, Woe, Anloga to Ada, the problem is the same — no market for the produce after a bumper harvest — forcing the price to plummet from GH¢60 to GH¢20 a crate. With the glut comes the added pressure of finding money to settle loan repayments and other monetary obligations.
By some strange irony, while the farmers are crying for market and good price for their produce, the processing plants are also claiming that they do not have enough raw materials for their factories. The queens, who do a lot of the prefinancing, are also complaining of unfair prices from the factories.
The country is, therefore, caught in a vicious circle. Our farmers struggle against all odds to produce the crop; then when it is harvest time there is no market. The produce then rots away, serving as a big disincentive to the farmers. A few weeks later, we spend a lot of foreign exchange to import the same produce that was rotting away a few weeks earlier.
While our farmers are crying for market, and while the few agro-processing factories are claiming inadequate raw materials for their factories, our country has become a big importer of tomatoes from outside. Our shops hardly sell tomato paste processed locally. Some of these imported pastes are labelled with local names as a deception. But that does not take away our dependency syndrome.
The Americans have a saying: “We eat what we can and can what we can’t.” That is common sense. The greatness of a country does not come by accident. You do not produce to throw away and go back to buy the same thing from another person a few days later and expect to develop.
Every year we experience bumper harvests. Every year we throw away farm produce, with its attendant loss to farmers. Every year we import food thrown away earlier. So what do we think of ourselves? When mango is in season, you see farmers begging people to buy the fruit. The same can be said of oranges, bananas, pineapples, pear and watermelon.
But enter any supermarket; you see only imported canned fruit juices on the shelves. While our farmers are licking their wounds, worried over how to raise funds to settle their debts, the farmers of South Africa, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, France, China and South Korea are laughing all the way to their holiday resorts.
Our agricultural sector has not recorded any significant successes to give credibility to that huge bureaucracy called the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). Other ministries such as Trade and Industry, Private Sector Development and PSI, Manpower, Youth and Employment and Local Government, Rural Development and Environment have not been able to give MoFA the necessary back-up to make agricultural production lucrative and attractive for employment generation.
We are still lagging behind in storage and processing facilities. The only way we can encourage local production is when farmers can be assured of reasonable guarantee prices for their produce. That will also be possible only if we have facilities to store and preserve excess farm produce for the lean season.
We do not need huge factories with sophisticated machinery to do most of these things. There should be a national agenda to establish agro-processing plants in all the major food growing areas to add value to our farm produce.
The added benefit is that a lot of our young men and women will be engaged in something productive at the local level. Other countries have done it and their products are in our shops. So why can’t we do the same?
A nation’s strength lies in its ability to produce what its citizens eat and the capacity to save the surplus for the rainy day. So far, apart from the unending promises and pledges, there is nothing on the ground to show that as a people we are ready to take full control of our destiny, food sufficiency wise.
For a country our size, and the land resources available, our food imports are just too many. Once we are able to stop the post-harvest losses and reduce the food imports, we will be in a better position to deploy precious cash into areas where we are naturally weak.
The tomato farmers and sellers may not be crying for themselves alone. They are also crying for agriculture, a sector which holds so much promise but which is doing more talking than acting.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
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