News:
July 4, 2018
Chairman for the committee on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs, Kwame Asafo-Adjei is calling on government to support cashew nut farmers with credit on concessional terms, to ensure growth of the overall national economy.
According to the chairman, the commodity needs support as a major non-traditional export crop in other to narrow the estimated trade deficit in helping bring on board foreign exchange earnings to support the local currency.
He further added that an estimated one hundred thousand farmers (100,000) are involved in cashew nut cultivation and a further (100,000) labourers are directly involved in the picking and harvesting, whiles five thousand (5,000) more are involved in drying and processing the cashew nuts.
Mr. Kwame Asafo-Adjei pointed out that in 2014 cashew nut was the highest nontraditional export earner for Ghana, as at 2017 the nation had two hundred and seventy-one million dollars foreign exchange and increase of twenty-seven percent.
The contribution of cashew to agriculture and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) without cocoa is 13.69 percent, despite this, the industry is troubled with low level of modern farming practices and poor harvesting with post-harvest practices leading to low quality of raw cashew nuts, he said.
By: Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/ghanamps.com