Gov’t should regulate sale of foodstuffs at farm gates – farmers
The Amoma Cashew and Mango Farmers Association have appealed to the government to introduce price regulatory measures for the sale of foodstuffs to middlemen at the farm gates.
According to them, the escalating cost of production and the cheating of farmers by the middlemen could force most farmers to back out of business because they would not have the resources to purchase agrochemicals and other farm inputs to aid them in their farming activities since it had become ”a ritual that every season we incur losses from the initial production stage to the sale of the foodstuffs”.
They suggested the need for the government to regulate the system by providing weighing scales for them to weigh the food items at the farm gates for it to become a “win-win situation” for both the farmer and the buyer.
Mr. Agyeman Kodom, the Chairman of the Association made the appeal on behalf of members in an interview with the Ghana News Agency about their plight because of losses emanating from the non-existence of fair prices for their produce at Amoma in the Kintampo South District of the Bono East Region.
Amoma is a farming community where most of the farmers are into the cultivation of green pepper, tomatoes, garden eggs, cashew, and mango in large quantities.
The buyers purchased from the farmers at “wickedly cheap prices” and sold in the urban markets at high prices to make huge profits at the expense of the farmers, Mr. Kodom lamented.
He cited a Kia vehicle truck-load of mangoes which contained more than 3000 pieces of the fruit was usually bought between at GhC4,000.00 and GhC5,000.00 during the harvesting period in that area, but same could be sold by the buyer to make about 100 percent profit.
”If the mangoes were weighed in kilograms for the buyers to purchase, we would have benefited greatly and will not be running at losses as we have been experiencing every season”, Mr. Kodom bemoaned.
He believed introducing scales as a means for farmers to sell their produce at the farm gates would serve as motivation for the youth to be determined to go into farming knowing the prospects and the benefits they would derive.
Newsghana
