CREATE SHEANUT MARKETING BOARD — AGRIC DIRECTOR (PAGE 25)

THE Tamale Metropolitan Director of Food and Agriculture, Mr Kwamina Arkorful, has suggested the creation of a Shea-nut Marketing Board (SMB) to accelerate the harnessing of the economic potentials of the industry.
“The creation of such a board should be made up of knowledgeable people to control and manage effectively the sector to enable farmers and the country to derive maximum benefits from the plant,” he stated.
Mr Arkorful made the suggestion at a day’s sensitisation seminar in Tamale on invoking anti-bushfire bye-laws to protect cereal farming in the Northern Region.
The seminar was aimed among other objectives, at engaging appropriate public sector institutions in dialogue as part of an advocacy programme to find solutions to challenges facing cereal farmers in northern Ghana.
It was organised by the Northern Cereal Growers, Processing and Marketers Association and sponsored by the Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) Fund.
The director noted that it was imperative for experts in shea-nut production to help sensitise people to the economic benefits of the shea tree.
He entreated chiefs to be vigilant to help curb the annual ritual of bush burning.
Mr Arkorful urged the participants to find ways of engaging chiefs in their respective communities in dialogue in adopting alternative livelihood programmes as a strategy to check bush burning.
The Chairman of Cereal Growers Association (CGA), Mr Abdul Rahman Alhassan, observed that the non-enforcement of the anti-bushfire bye-laws of district assemblies had given “a field day to militant and armed hunter syndicates to set bushfires for game and hunting”.
The Regional Secretary of the Shea-nut Growers Association, Mr Addle Kabarah, noted that the non-implementation of research works by the Crop Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) sub-station at Bole was a major concern to shea-nut farmers.
“These research works were shelved while the survival of our industry is under serious threat as our tradition parkland is getting depopulated at an alarming rate,” he stated.
Mr Kabarah noted that the steady decline over the years in the shea-nut industry would eventually cause a loss of livelihood for the farmers resulting in increased poverty, waste of natural resources and loss of national revenue.