Last Sunday morning at the Eden Savoy Hotel on Hoogstraat in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, the chatter at the lobby was unusual. It was loud, raucuous and, sometimes, heated as a dozen or so fruit and vegetable producers as well as agriculture and trade ministries officials from Ghana, waiting for keys to their rooms, plunged into animated discussion about the woes and prospects of their industry. It was the four-day tour of Holland and Germany, ahead of Fruit Logisitica, the world’s largest fruit fair in Berlin from February 8-10. GTZ, the German Aid Agency, and the Export Development and Investment Fund are sponsoring the tour.

GTZ

GTZ took me along so that together we can bring the spotlight on an aspect of our agriculture, which has huge potential, but which receives hardly the media or public attention necessary to focus the minds of decision-makers and catalyse the right appropriate and urgent action. GTZ took me along so that together we can bring the spotlight on an aspect of our agriculture, which has huge potential, but which receives hardly the media or public attention necessary to focus the minds of decision-makers and catalyse the right appropriate and urgent action. Take global fresh pineapple exports alone — never mind other fruits or processed pineapples — stood at 1.75 million metric tonnes worth 1.3 billion dollars by 2005 figures. The most Ghana has ever exported is 71,000 metric tonnes in 2004. And this is the most successful of the non-traditional export commodities. Back in 1994 total volumes exported was a measly 15,000 metric tonnes. But Ghana’s capacity is nowhere near its peak. And then, of course, there’re other produce as well: mango, papaya, passion fruit, peppers, ginger, aubergine and lots more, which haven’t yet made the relative leap of pineapples, but can.

PRODUCERS

The gaggle of Ghanaian producers at the Savoy lobby, emboldened by several generous helpings of sausage and salami were being uncharacteristically frank with one another. They believe that given Ghana’s favourable climatic conditions, they can compete with the big boys if the policies and structures are right. Take tiny Costa Rica, a country one-quarter Ghana’s land mass, a fifth of its population and without Ghana’s ideal tropical conditions — in 2005 they exported nearly a billion dollars worth of pineapples. The most Ghana has ever done is 20 million dollars! Pathetic. "We have producers’ associations, but they’re not relevant to their members," Joseph Tontoh, managing director of Joro Farms and Agriculture Processing, belted out from across the lobby. "As long as they’re irrelevant, people will either not join or they’ll go off and start breakaway associations, and that"s not good for the industry. We need a united voice," said Tontoh, brother of Osibisa’s Mac Tontoh. Among the cocktail of vegetables from Tontoh’s farm is pepper, and so he’s probably hotter and more restless than his brother the trumpeter. "Do we pay our dues?" questioned Mr. Ransford Atatsi, executive secretary of the Papaya and Mango Producers and Exporters Association of Ghana (Pampeag). "People don’t pay their dues and yet they want the association to satisfy their wishes. I can’t use my pocket money to run the secretariat, whilst you’re busy on your farm!" "EDIF(Export Development and Investment Fund) too is not doing anything for us," yelled Samuel Otu Amoah, president of the Horticulturists’ Association of Ghana (HAG), wagging his finger at the soft-spoken representative of the alleged culprit agency. "The money is meant for us, but they’ve given it to the banks, and we now have to go and apply, but you know the banks have their own agenda!" said Amoah, agitated. "Look, Mr. Amoah, tell me, have you ever come to sit down with us before? Frank Obeng, Assistant Director for Export Development and Promotion at EDIF, challenged. "If you come, we will help you formulate a feasible growth strategy to enable you to access funds to develop your business," Obeng asserted, standing his ground. "We’ve done it for others, ask Mintah". Stephen Mintah is the general manager of the Sea-Freight Pineapple Exporters of Ghana (SPEG). SPEG received about two million dollars from EDIF, a government agency, for pineapple farmers to buy the expensive MD2 suckers for cultivation. This followed the switch in European consumer preference for the MD2 variety from Smooth Cayenne, which Ghanaian producers had been exporting since the 80s. By the way, at the equivalent of half a dollar, a single MD2 sucker costs 22 times that of smooth cayenne. And so producers required emergency financial and technical intervention to keep themselves in business, and the thousands of out-growers and farm-hands on the land. The finger-pointing at the foyer of the Eden Savoy notwithstanding, it’s not all doom and gloom for Ghana’s horticulture export business. Export of mangoes, for instance has risen progressively from less than 15,000 metric tonnes in 1994 to over 400 metric tonnes in 2005. Papaya has also gone up from 20 metric tonnes to 3,000 metric tonnes in 2005.

TEMA PORT

A four-million dollar fruit-handling terminal with cooling facilities at Shed 9 of Tema Port is due to be commissioned before the end of June this year. It is equipped to store eight different kinds of horticultural produce at the same time, even if they require different temperatures to maintain freshness, because they have separate palletted chambers. "Currently, the fruits are kept standing in the sun and the rain for hours before they’re loaded onto vessels," says Mawuli Agboka who heads the Food and Agriculture Ministry’s Horticultural Export Industry Initiative. "That seriously affects the quality and taste of the products." Indeed very often importers reject vast quantities of produce from Ghana partly as a result of poor and unprofessional handling. Sometimes, they even charge the cost of disposing of the damaged produce to the exporter. But some exporters suspect that crooked European importers are taking advantage of them by claiming their produce is damaged so that they won’t have to pay for it. "I believe that some of them have been lying," says Amoah of HAG. "Once I was supposed to be paid more than 60,000 euros, but the importer paid me less than 4,000 euros; he said my produce was spoilt but all the paperwork from Europe told a different story." Other Ghanaian exporters say they’ve also been in similar situations. However, when they rushed over to Europe to see the damaged goods for themselves, they found their produce beautifully displayed and a very happy importer doing brisk business. Anyway, now you don’t have to listen to stories from Ghanaian exporters or European importers, at least where pineapples are concerned. An international inspections company, BIVAC Ghana, has been contracted on a pilot basis by USAID to conduct pre-shipment inspections on farms, pack-houses and ports. This will build trust on both sides and improve Ghana’s fresh produce brand. Even so, the Ghanaian authorities could do more to help air-freight exporters of vegetables. "Conditions at the seaport is about to change, but conditions at the airport are obsolete; we have to do something seriously about it immediately," says Tontoh. A fresh produce export terminal at the Accra Airport is estimated to cost up to eight million dollars, according to Agboka. Considering the jobs which the horticulture industry can potentially create and the returns to be gained by entrepreneurs as well as the finance minister’s insatiable wallet, come on, this is small change. By Kweku Sakyi-Addo