Farmers Urged To Seek For Markets Before Production

Vegetable farmers have been advised to look for marketing avenues for their produce before going into production and not the vice versa. Mr. Cephas Ametefe, a Horticulturist and Consultant in best agriculture practices, was addressing a group of vegetable farmers during practical farm lessons for them at Denu. He said looking for markets at the time of harvest was one reason for the huge post-harvest losses, and therefore investments. �Look for markets before going into production and not the other way round, because agriculture is now real business and every move must be based on plans,� he said. Twenty-five farmers from the Ningo-Prampram District and Ketu South Municipality, took part in the day's exercise, organized by the Vegetable Producers and Exporters Association of Ghana (VEPEAG). The exercise, which had already taken place in the Central Region, was meant to eliminate problems affecting the sector, teach new farming methods, marketing strategies and chemical application. Mr. Ametefe, who is also the Vice-President of VEPEAG, stressed that prior knowledge of market conditions was always helpful for farmers as any other business. He took participants through bed soaking, water solution application on new transplants, specific plant population density and crop staking. Mr. Ametefe said transplanting was a major fundamental stage of cropping, which when done wrongly, could adversely reduce yield, and advised them to take every stage of planting seriously. He asked farmers to use insect-proof material coverings to prevent white flies from attacking their nurseries. Mr. Emmanuel Arden, President of the Dawhenya Cooperative Food Farmers Association Limited, also a participant, appealed for storage facilities and preferential electricity tariffs for farmers. Mr. Joseph Tonto, VEPEAG President, in a workshop at Denu ahead of the field work, asked farmers to adhere to best practices for quality vegetables. He cautioned that vegetable production would suffer if farmers threw caution to the wind, observing that the huge losses of Watermelon on fields along the Aflao- Accra highway could have been prevented. Mr. Geoffrey Agbleze, Ketu South Agriculture Officer, said a bazaar to popularize the value and uses of butternut squash, a new vegetable introduced into the country, was in the offing. Vegetable categories on which the fields work focused included onion, carrot, okro, pepper, butternut squash, lettuce and cabbage.