One hundred and thirty regional development officers and agricultural extension agents have been trained on a greenhouse technology for the cultivation of vegetables in the country.
The first batch of 70 was drawn from the Ashanti, Upper West, Upper East, Northern, Western and Brong Ahafo regions.
The second batch, made up of 60 participants, came from the Greater Accra, Volta, Central and Eastern regions.
Organised by the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP), the training was facilitated by resource persons from Dizengoff Ghana.
Some of the topics treated were nursery management, crop protection, harvesting, post-harvest processes, record keeping, land preparation and crop cultivation techniques using improved hybrid seeds.
Contract
The National Coordinator of WAAPP Ghana, Mrs Azara Al-Mamshie, said last year the World Bank released $1 million for the procurement of 150 greenhouses for farmers across the country.
She said this year the bank had offered a tender to procure an additional 100 greenhouses to be distributed among the 10 regions.
She said the training was part of the contract awarded by the World Bank to Dizengoff Ghana to supply the greenhouses under the WAAPP project.
Mrs Al-Mamshie explained that the second phase of the WAAPP project was expected to benefit 700,000 individuals along the value chain at the end of the project cycle, out of which 40 per cent would be women.
Importation
The Country Integrated Project Manager of Dizengoff Ghana, Mr Samuel Abbey, said Ghana imported over 120,000 metric tonnes of fresh tomatoes, including tomato puree, equivalent to $100 million per annum, as well 80,000 metric tonnes of onions, equivalent to $60 million per annum.
“This over-reliance on imports is regarded as highly unacceptable because the agricultural sector needs to be self-sustainable,” he said.
According to Mr Abbey, the greenhouse technology was good for the country, since vegetable production was characterised by many challenges, including the unavailability of improved varieties and seeds, heavy dependence on rainfall, difficult access to quality agro inputs, the slow pace of adoption of new improved technologies and the lack of hands-on agronomist monitoring.
He said presently most vegetable farmers in the country were growing low-yielding varieties using indigenous agronomic practices.
“Yields, therefore, are very low with very poor produce quality.These limit farmers from securing good prices, as well as exploring the huge local, regional and international markets,” he added.
