Sekondi/Takoradi vegetable growers falling out of business

Vegetable farmers in Sekondi-Takoradi are falling out of business because of poor patronage of their produce by traders and the general public, a Ghana News Agency survey has revealed.

Many farmers are now drifting to other regions particularly Kumasi in the Ashanti Region where prospects of vegetable farming are good.

The gloomy and unpredictable vegetable business in the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis is mainly attributed to the use of a heavily polluted stream to water the vegetables.

The GNAs survey also revealed that traders prefer selling vegetables cultivated in Kumasi and openly invite buyers by shouting this vegetable is from Kumasi.

Vegetables traders Maame Adjoa, Auntie Akosua and Maame Adjoa told the GNA that they got most of their vegetables from Kumasi and this situation had forced some vegetable farmers to abandon their trade and return to Burkina Faso.

Most of the farms are lying idle along the Kwesimintsim highway also known as AGIP which has a stream polluted with solid and liquid waste and commuters get worried when they see farmers watering their vegetable farms with water from the stream.

The farmers appealed to the Regional Ministry of Food and Agriculture and benevolent institutions to as a matter of urgency support them with boreholes to enable them stay in business.

Madam Adjoa, who has been in the business for over 10 years, said she got her produce from the husbands farm at Beahu a in the Ahanta-West District of the Region and also travels to Kumasi to purchase vegetable when the husbands farm yields were not good.

She agreed that polluted water used by some farmers in the metropolis was worrying but was quick to add that her husband had a well on his farm from which he draws water for farming.

Madam Adjoa said people came from far and near to buy her goods for both consumption and medicinal purposes.

Mr. George Okyere, owner of a vast vegetable farm at Sekondi Ridge, said though he had access to clean potable water, there was the need for expansion works to cover all areas of the farmland.