Pepper farmers at Zaare irrigation farms in the Bolgatanga Municipality of the Upper East Region are appealing to the government to purchase their ripe pepper, which is rotting on the farms due to the lack of a ready market.
The farmers say they borrowed money to invest in the production of the vegetable and, if nothing is done to get the pepper off the farms, they will lose their huge investments.
About 400,000 acres of land stretching from the Bolgatanga Municipality through the Tono irrigation farm belt to Vea in the Bongo District is used for vegetable production, mainly pepper, tomato and onions.
The farmers undertake year-round irrigation farming using the facilities of the Irrigation Company of Upper Region (ICOUR) through the Vea Dam and its canals.
According to the farmers, the ripe pepper is not reaching the market and, whenever they attempt to send it there, the situation worsens due to pricing disputes between them and traders.
“You can see the farm; there is no market for the pepper and no one is coming to buy. We don’t understand. Just look at the place, look at the pepper and how they are going bad and drying up. So we don’t know what we are going to do now. We went and borrowed money to get started, and how are we going to return to the farm again when all our investments are gone?” Baba Adongo, a farmer, said.
“We were farming tomatoes, and buyers stopped purchasing them and instead went to Burkina Faso. Now we have shifted our energy and attention to the production of pepper, but still there is no market for it,” another farmer, Amigera Adongo, said.
“Look at the way the pepper is ripe, yet we can’t get a market for it. So how will I farm next time? The government should come to our aid. We are just begging. Look at this produce — what am I going to do? The market women no longer come to buy, and we don’t know the reason.”
According to the farmers, no buyer has even made an attempt to visit the farms to negotiate or reject the price, as traders do not come to the farms at all.
A visit to some of the pepper farms at Zaare revealed peppers drying up and going to waste. The farmers explained that they can only harvest when there is a ready market due to the lack of proper storage facilities to reduce post-harvest losses.
Observations indicate that the farmers are likely to lose everything if a market is not secured soon, a situation that could dampen confidence among existing farmers and discourage others from venturing into vegetable farming.
Source: 3news.com