Improve tomato production in UER - Buyers

Bolgatanga, Mar 6, GNA - The National Tomato Traders and Transporters' Association has appealed to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) to study tomato cultivation in Burkina Faso to improve production in the Upper East Region (UER).

It noted that while tomatoes from Burkina Faso were firm, beautiful and stayed longer the produce from the UER easily got rotten on the journey to southern Ghana.

Speaking at a meeting of representatives of the traders and farmers in Bolgatanga, Madam Lydia Afoley Anum, General Secretary of the Association, said the traders spent about 2 billion CFA a day to import a maximum of 100 trucks of tomatoes from Burkina Faso. She pointed out that, that huge sum of foreign exchange could have been used for other purposes if farmers in UER had been helped to improve the quality of their produce.

"The process of travelling by these trucks on such long journey is not easy. It is very much inconvenient to us, especially as we face a lot of problems there. We want to be able to buy and sell tomatoes from this region but it does not last long", she stated. Madam Afoley Anum said members of the Association had earlier agreed at a meeting in Accra to make half of their purchases from the UER and the other 50 per cent from Burkina Faso.

Madam Afoley Anum said the agreement was reached because the buyers could not abandon their customers in Burkina Faso entirely since they had been doing business with them for the past six years ago when the region's farmers were cultivating on a small scale. "We bought only two trucks in the first year and as they increased production and we realised that they had good tomatoes we increased our demand", she said.

Mr. Roy Ayariga, Regional Director of Agriculture, said MOFA in the UER had good relationship with their counterpart in Burkina Faso and would liase with them to study the varieties and the methods being used there.

He said however, that he was not convinced that the difference between tomatoes produced in Ghana and that from Burkina Faso could be attributed to the variety or method of cultivation since UER farmers got their seeds from that country and used the same chemical fertiliser. Mr. Boniface Gambila, Regional Minister, urged the traders to be patriotic and not to consider their profit alone. He asked them to think about the country's economy as well and to meet regularly to discuss issues of interest to them to avoid misunderstanding.

The farmers apologised to the traders for the experience they went through when some young farmers blocked the road to prevent the traders from going to Burkina Faso. 06 Mar 07