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A soil scientist has called for the government to take deliberate steps to properly organize plantation crops for commercial purposes. Dr. Eric Owusu Adjei of the Soil Research Institute (SRI) - Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) said cassava, oil palm and rubber should be taken care of just the same way as was being done with cocoa by the Cocobod.Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Kumasi, he made reference to the introduction of the Presidential Special Initiative on Cassava under the Kufuor Administration and said that was brilliant.
It provided financial and technical know-how to about 25,000 farmers to grow the crop for processing into high grade industrial starch.He asked that more was done to aggressively promote large scale cassava production because it thrived on most soils in the country.
Dr. Adjei said this could be extremely important to the drive towards lifting people out of poverty and job creation for the youth. He also spoke of the need to revive the Ghana Oil Palm Development Association (GOPDA) to grow the oil palm industry.He cited the strong progress made by Malaysia in oil palm production and said the nation could do better than it was now doing.
Oil-palm, he noted, was among the world’s versatile raw materials – accounting for more than half of the global import and export trade of all vegetable oils. Dr. Adjei touched on the rubber industry and said revitalizing it should be seen as vital considering the huge economic prospects.
Global demand for natural rubber had kept rising – projected to hit 15 million tonnes by 2020, he added.The Ghana Rubber Estate Limited (GREL) is targeting between 40,000 and 41,000 tonnes, this year. He stated that these plantation crops could do well in the various agro-ecological zones across the country and what was left was to give the farmers the needed push.
