TOMATO farmers in the Upper East Region are up in arms. And their frustration is two-fold: The absence of a guaranteed market for their produce and the lack of access to improved agricultural extension services.
In a communiqué issued after a day’s consultative forum involving stakeholders in the tomato industry in Bolgatanga, the farmers claimed that their call on the government over the past decade to complement their efforts by creating an enabling environment to help them increase production had yielded few or no results.
They did not stop there. The next moment, they dropped the bombshell — if the situation did not change, they would not go into tomato farming during the next season.
The importance of tomatoes in our diet cannot be overstated. Apart from being very healthy, they are a good source of vitamins A and C. Vitamin A is important for bone growth, cell division and differentiation, helping in the regulation of the immune system and maintaining the surface linings of the eyes, the respiratory, urinary and intestinal tracts. That is not all. Tomatoes are also very powerful antioxidants which can help prevent the development of many forms of cancer.
Currently, the tomato has a higher consumption rate in more developed countries and is often referred to as a luxury crop. In Israel, for example, it is such an important part of the diet that it is a major part of the food basket which is used when calculating the Consumer Price Index (CPI). In other words, a scarcity of tomatoes can cause the CPI to rise and influence the inflation rate.
Given the importance of the crop, researchers the world over are always anxious to introduce improved varieties, as well as new cultivars with better resistance to various diseases, with the view to making tomatoes an important part of the diet in developing countries as well.
We, therefore, wholeheartedly support the call by the farmers on the government to, as a matter of urgency, deploy a technical team from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) to support tomato farmers with machines and inputs to ensure effective and efficient techniques in their operations.
It is sad to learn that the farmer/extension service official ratio currently stands at 1:500 and we urge the government to improve the situation and also invest more in research into the tomato disease in the region.
The fact that in 2007 tomato production across the country contributed about 1.4 per cent to the national GDP and about four per cent of agricultural GDP, even amidst serious challenges, is a clear signal that the future holds good and we cannot allow things to plunder.
Fortunately for us, the Northern Star Tomato Company (NSTC) — formerly the Pwalugu Tomato Factory — is ready and willing to play the role for which it was strategically established by the Dr Kwame Nkrumah administration many years ago and we cannot allow that dream to die.
Is it not ironical that Ghana has become Africa’s largest importer of tomato concentrate from the European Union (EU), with imports of more than 10,000 tonnes per year, when, in the early 1960s, the Pwalugu Factory was producing as much as 100 tonnes of concentrate a day before it was closed down?
But our failure to harness this opportunity has resulted in the loss of business and employment opportunities for many Ghanaians and a gain for workers and investors in Europe and America.
Dr Nkrumah saw the link between agriculture and state supported agro-processing factories and its benefits just as clearly as the developed nations did and continue to do and pursued it vigorously.
The ball is now clearly in our court and the Daily Graphic urges the government to explore all the opportunities to make the NSTC viable in order to serve the farmers better.
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