Wholesome vegetable cultivation project launched at Tarkwa to entice youth
An agricultural programme dubbed Youth in Organic Horticulture Production Project (YouHop), has been launched at Tarkwa. The programme seeks to entice the youth in the Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipality in the Western Region to engage in wholesome vegetable cultivation.
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GoldFields Ghana Limited and the Federal Republic of Germany, under a programme called the Employment for Sustainable Development in Africa, have committed 800,000 Euros for the project which is expected to span a three-year period. The programme is designed to create avenues for employment and improve incomes for about 1,000 young people in the municipality.
Under the terms of the project, GoldFields will provide funding and other contributions in kind, including equipment and farming inputs, support for the promotion of a Ghana Green Label and farmer business schools, as well as stakeholder workshops.
The green label certification is to ensure that vegetables, produced under the YouHop programme, will seek certification from the Ghana Green Label Secretariat to confirm that they are produced under strict, acceptable and verifiable agricultural protocols
In addition, the German Development Co-operation (GIZ) will also offer technical and financial assistance, ensure project management and monitoring, as well as identify key actors along the vegetable value chain, among other support.
To ensure the sustainability of the programme, the availability of capital is critical and, therefore, a co-operative credit union has been instituted, which requires membership of all YouHop participants.
The employment for sustainable development in Africa is a community-based financing system that provides low interest credit facilities and business advisory services to the programme participants.
The programme’s business schools would offer training in both improved traditional farming practices and on organic vegetable production. It would also assist producers to organise themselves into viable farmer co-operatives and build the capacities of their leadership to enable the group to establish a community-based credit union.
Overview
The Sustainable Development Manager of Gold Fields Ghana, Mr Robert Siaw, gave an overview of the programme last Tuesday and explained that even though agriculture was the mainstay of many communities, it was quite evident that the youth residing in the company’s operational area and even countrywide, were not particularly excited about growing traditional cash crops such as cocoa and oil palm.
He said those crops had long gestation periods and required large tracts of land whose acquisition was usually problematic and expensive.
He noted, however, that vegetable production seemed a viable alternative for the youth, since it required much smaller land for cultivation, had shorter gestation periods and held great income generating potential.
‘‘While waiting for two to five years for cocoa and oil palm to be ready for harvest, the vegetable farmer will benefit from three harvesting cycles within a single year,’’ the Sustainable Development Manager observed.
Statistics
According to Mr Siaw, statistics from the Ghana Export Promotion Centre (GEPC) suggested that Ghana was nowhere close to meeting its export potential in vegetables, while local production was only seasonal.
The Executive Vice-President and Head of Gold Fields West Africa, Mr Alfred Baku, disclosed that the company in partnership with the government, through the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA), was undertaking the rehabilitation of the 29-kilometre Tarkwa-Damang road in the municipality at a cost of $17 million.
