Pawpaw farmers cry over low prices

The inability of pawpaw farmers to form an association is affecting sales and marketing of the product in the Suhum, Kraboa, Coaltar and Nsawam area.

The situation has made it possible for the market women to dictate the price of pawpaw and often offer very low prices to the farmers.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) Mr Samuel Oboubi, owner of Mega Farms at Nsawam, said pawpaw farming was being affected greatly by the lack of farmer-based organization to enable the pawpaw farmers to present a united front when it comes to pricing of the product.

He said though they had customers coming from Accra, Kumasi, Togo and manufacturing companies like Blue Skies and African Cola buying from farmers that had not boosted the price of the commodity in any way.

Mr Obuobi said the only way forward for pawpaw farmers was to form an association which would be ready to speak the same voice, improve upon the marketing system of the farmers and help the farmers to dictate the price of their products.

Mr Oboubi said a basket of 60 pieces of pawpaw is being sold to the buyers at between GH5.00 and GH10.00.

He said the high cost of labour and inputs for pawpaw farming against the low prices was likely to force a lot of the pawpaw farmers out of business soon.

Mr Obuobi said it was only in the dry season that the farmers were able to get good prices “but this the time when the harvest is also very low and so the farmers do not make much.”

Mr Oboubi called on all pawpaw farmers in the area to come together to form an association to enable them to take full control over the marketing of the products of their toil.