Brong Ahafo needs agro-processing plant - Agriculturist

Sunyani (B/A), June 12, GNA - The Reverend Dr. Franklin Kwesi Biney, an agriculturist, on Friday called on the government to consider establishing an agro-food processing facility in Brong-Ahafo Region, to add value to raw agricultural produce.

"As the Region prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its birth, it is incumbent that it is propelled to become an agro-food processing magnate, rather than the traditional method of carting unprocessed raw materials to local markets," he said. In a statement he made available to the Ghana News Agency, the former Farm Manager of erstwhile Mim Agro Food Industry, observed that Brong-Ahafo "is generally endowed with good soil but lots of food produced are left to go waste due to the fact that most roads linking farm areas are in bad shape".

Dr. Biney noted that the establishment of an agro-food processing plant, which would place emphasis on manufacturing high quality products, would boost food production and generate employment for the teeming unemployed youth in the Region.

He said in ensuring the preservation of high quality raw materials, careful planning must be given to certain areas including harvesting techniques, timing and methods of the farm storage processing or technique, and time between harvest and processing.

Other areas the agriculturist mentioned are storage prior to processing, storage and packaging methods prior to transportation and delivery to the consumer, production of crop at field level, soil variety, rainfall and methods of preparation by the consumer. Dr Biney called for the creation of market channels to stimulate producers to produce more, saying: "As the scale of production goes up, scale of processing plant can be planned and be implemented".