Glut in PSI oil palm seedlings at Akotogua

Mankessim (C/R), Nov. 2, GNA - About 70,000 matured oil palm seedlings nursed at Akotogua near Baifikrom Water Head in the Central Region under the President's Special Initiative (PSI) on Oil Palm are not receiving the required patronage, even under very favourable terms of payment.

Mr John Baah Seesi, Nursery Operator of the Mfantseman Oil Palm Plantation Limited (MOPP), told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview at Mankessim on Thursday that the company had nursed 100,000 seedlings under the PSI to be supplied to prospective farmers on hire-purchase.

Mr Seesi said even though the farmers were made to understand that they would pay for the seedlings after five years, when they would have started bearing fruits, the patronage was disappointing. According to him the farmers demanded that the seedlings be delivered to them on their farms, but because MOPP had no vehicles for the conveyance it could not do it until the Mfantseman District Assembly released a tractor to the company for the purpose. He said the farmers were made to fuel the tractor in conveying the seedlings to their farms.

=93I therefore see no reason why the farmers are not interested in clearing the stock=94, he lamented.

When the GNA contacted Mr Vincent Biney Amissah an oil palm farmer, he cited the high cost of fuelling the tractor and the unavailability of wire-nets to protect the seedling from being destroyed by rodents and the high cost of preparing the lands as setbacks for the promotion of the PSI on oil palm in the area.

Mr Amissah, who is also a private businessman, said farmers had to go to the Oil Palm Research Institute at Kade to procure the wire-nets. He appealed to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) to send some of the wire-nets to the district directorates of agriculture to ensure that the farmers had easy access to them.