The Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) says it has initiated moves to help producers and exporters of agricultural produce acquire Global Good Agriculture Practice (GAP) certification.
The GAP certification would make it possible for local exporting companies to export their produce to any part of the world.
Currently, most of the local farmers who feed the exporting companies do not have that certification, posing a threat to the chances of local exporters having continued access to the external markets.
The President of the Ghana Association of Vegetable Exporters (GAVEX), Mrs Juliana Opuni, earlier raised concerns about the fate of local exporters as the country was not making any efforts to acquire the GAP certification.
According to Mrs Opuni, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Joekopan Enterprise and Woman Exporter of 2012, sooner rather than later, most produce from the country will not be accepted without that certification.
But responding to the concern at the GRAPHIC BUSINESS/Fidelity Bank Breakfast Meeting in Accra, the CEO of GEPA, Mr Gideon Quarcoo, said there was a project underway to facilitate the acquisition of the certification.
“There is a project that is underway between GEPA and partnership funding from Canada on how we can assist our producers to get certification, and I think that some organisations have been identified in the pipeline in terms of those that can be supported,” he said.
GEPA, he said, was trying to create demonstration farms to house clusters of producers where the global GAP certification seminars and demonstrations could take place all in a bid to spur the process.
“What we are trying to do at GEPA in the area of agriculture is to create demonstration farms and bring clusters of producers within a given area so that the global gap certification seminars and demonstrations can take place on the demonstration farms,” he said.
He also mentioned that there were other strategies in line to achieve this but it had to be serialised because of funding challenges.
“Anyone will be correct in saying that these things need to be generalised in the rest of the country. Funding may not allow it to happen in that fashion although serially we may get there over time,” he added.
GAP certification
The Global GAP is a set of standards that exporters of agriculture and related produce are required to obtain before their goods can be accepted into any country worldwide.
Good agricultural practices (GAP) are specific methods which, when applied to agriculture, create food for consumers or further processing that is safe and wholesome.
Although there are several methods that are deemed to be good agricultural practices, there are some that are globally accepted that applies to agricultural produce which are exported to other countries.