Members of parliament from Bono and Bono East regions are urging the government to consider setting the producer price for cashews at ghc10 for cashew farmers.
Ghana’s Cashew sector is not as developed as its cocoa sector. For over seven decades, as the world’s second, and at some point leading, producer of cocoa, Ghana has benefited enormously from her cocoa sector. All these years, the cocoa sector has been the most well-organized, and properly regulated subsector of the Agricultural industry, with the Ghana Cocoa Board, established in 1947 to regulate the sector, playing a crucial role in this regard. This explains why the cocoa sector remains the most developed subsector of the agroindustry with Ghana earning more than $2 billion in annual foreign exchange while also serving as a major source of employment and income to about 800,000 families (according to AsokoInsight).
However, as the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo, indicated at the official inauguration of the Tree Crops Development Authority (TCDA) in September 2020, there is a need for “a change in our country’s agricultural direction and its overreliance on cocoa”. Ghana’s overreliance on cocoa has resulted in the underdevelopment of some very potential subsectors of the Agricultural industry and the cashew sector is one of such.
Ghana’s cashew sector is one of the most promising in West Africa. Despite the low attention given to the sector in Ghana, per the records of the African Cashew Alliance (ACA), the sector has seen significant growth in the past decade. Cashew production has grown from 22, 000 in 2009 to an estimated 105, 000 MT in 2020. Close to a million families in Ghana are directly and indirectly employed by Cashew, including farmers, buyers/exporters, and processors.
The lawmakers are arguing that the cashew farmers are currently operating at a loss with the ghc7 farm gage price due to high inflation and production costs.
The MPs highlight a sharp decline in the producer price of cashew from ghc10 to ghc7 adversely affecting the production capacity of farmers.
The group spokesperson Hon. Frederick Yaw Ahenkwah MP for Jaman North called for a review of the price upwards.
Story by: Osei Akoto / Ahotoronline.com
