Farmers, traders call for standard measuring unit for sale of maize
Maize farmers and traders from the two major maize markets in the country, Techiman and Ejura, have called for the adoption of a standard in the measurement of the produce throughout the country.
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They have, therefore, asked the government to play a leading role by adopting and enforcing a standard in order to sanitise the maize market.
The adoption of an agreed measurement for the sale of the produce, according to them, would ensure that there was uniformity in the unit of measurement at all the maize markets in the country and prevent traders from taking advantage of farmers.
Both traders and farmers agreed that the adoption of a weighing scale in the sale of the produce would ensure that both traders and farmers were not short-changed and each of them would have value for money.
Survey
The call was contained in the findings of research conducted by the Crops Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CRI-CSIR) in market standardisation, grading and pricing for maize in Ghana.
The research, which was funded by the USAID as part of its Agricultural Policy Support Project (APSP), was aimed at making policy recommendations for adoption by stakeholders to maintain a standard of measurement, grading, quality and pricing in the maize value chain.
Outcome
At a workshop to validate the outcome of the research, Mr Alexander Adu-Appiah said although maize was widely grown throughout the country and constituted about 67 per cent of cereals produced in Ghana, there were some challenges facing the maize market.
Some of these challenges were low standards and product differentiation, he said.
According to him, there was not a uniform price for the produce in the country, and that the lack of a uniform measurement unit put the farmers at a big disadvantage.
He said from the research, although there was an attempt by farmers and other stakeholders in the Ejura and Techiman municipalities to adopt a uniform measurement unit by abandoning the old unit of measurement known as Size 5 bag, which weighed about 132kg or Size 4, which weighed 100kg, the practice could not be sustained.
He said the sizes differed from one market to another.
Besides that, he said because the standard had been adopted by all the maize markets in the country, farmers and traders at Ejura and Techiman were losing their share of the market to other smaller markets where the standard unit of measurement was a requirement for traders.
Benefit of standard
Mr Adu-Appiah said if a standard was adopted for the produce, not only would farmers improve on their income, the district assemblies would also increase their revenue.
Some of the traders at the workshop also raised concerns about the instability of transport fares in the country which forced some of them to also insist on using the bigger sacks to buy from the farmers.
According to one trader, unlike neighbouring countries where transport fares were fixed and therefore stable, the same thing could not be said of Ghana where the fares could increase more than twice within a year.
That, according to the traders, made planning difficult, thus affecting their profit margins if they maintained the same standard at all the markets.