The ‘Oil Palm Master Plan’ is expected to become the blue print, which will outline the set of projects and programmes to be executed for the sector’s growth.
It will focus on access to financing, certification, land-use policy, technology transfer, and infrastructure development from the farm to the port, as well as pricing mechanism and marketing.
Approximately, 305,700 hectares of oil palm plantation is being cultivated nationwide and an additional 20,000 hectares of oil palm farm is needed to meet the local demand.
In 2010, oil palm processing groups projected a production output of 260,000 metric tonnes of palm oil which indicates a deficit of 35,000 metric tonnes leaving government with no option but to spend US$100 million annually on the importation of oil palm to make up for the deficit.
An estimated unmet demand of oil palm in ECOWAS sub-region is between 850,000 metric tonnes and 1,000,000 metric tonnes annually, a huge market which the country can take advantage of if properly managed.
The country is said to have a total area of 305,758 hectors of oil palm. More than 80 percent of this is cultivated by private small-scale farmers who mostly use volunteer of unimproved planting materials. This has contributed to the very low productivity of the Ghanaian oil palm industry."
 |
| harvested bunches left on farm for a week |
Source:thebftonline.com click here for more
now my take:
In the year 2004 under the Presidential Special Initiative (PSI) over 6000 Ha's of Oil Palm plantations were cultivated across the Western, Eastern and Brong- Ahafo Regions.
Land provided by individuals and the government under PSI provided improved, hybrid seedlings to the farmers. However not even one processing unit was constructed to process the harvested fruits into Crude Palm Oil (CPO).
Farmers lost hope as there was no one to purchase harvested fruits and also no Processing Unit. Most of these farms have been overtaken by weeds with some close to semi-forest vegetation. Farmers go through the pain of processing the oil themselves but that is a very herculean task according to Opanyin Nicholas Ntiamoah an Oil Palm farmer in the Tano South District- Bechem.
The way forward? Rehabilitation of the old farms and providing at least mini- processing units at district level can help supplement the already deficient production of the country’s major producers, Benso Oil Palm Plantation (BOPP) and Twifo Oil Palm Plantation (TOPP), Ghana Oil Palm Development and Norpalm, a Norwegian firm turn out around 80,000 tonnes per annum as against 90,000 tonnes demanded by Unilever alone.
This would also create employment and empower rural folk in the catchment area of operation.
The mode of operation shouldn't end with the farmer but the entire Value Chain considered to enhance rural development
"the Best Culture is Agriculture"
put together by : Akwasi Tagoe
No comments:
Post a Comment