Banks urged to invest in agribusiness sector
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Glofert Company Limited, Reverend Foster Mawuli Benson, has called on banks to direct some of their investments into the agribusiness sector.
Rev. Benson, who was speaking to the media after a programme at the International Fertiliser Development Centre (IFDC) at Asuboi in the Eastern Region, said more banks needed to come in to support the indigenous companies to augment government’s efforts.
The event, which was organised by IFDC, was intended to give international training on how to produce and distribute balanced fertilisers for a better crop nutrition to small-scale farmers.
The five-day training was attended by 70 delegates from 25 countries across the world, to learn how they could better produce fertilisers to increase production.
Glofert Company Limited is the biggest fertiliser blending plant in Ghana, and blends 2,400 metric tonnes or 48,000 of 50 kilogrammes bags of blended fertilisers in a day.
The facility, which started operations some two years ago, is one of the projects initiated under the One District, One Factory (1D1F) and is due for commissioning soon.
It has employed over 220 permanent and casual workers who are from nearby towns and communities in the district.
Rev. Benson said one of his outfit’s priorities was to be able to identify the problems that the farmers faced, by putting in tailor measured fertiliser composition for them.
He said most of the farmers complained of low yields and indicated that the challenge could be the result of poor agronomic practices, wrong application of fertilisers and the use of only off the shelf fertilisers over the years.
‘‘We believe that the soil in Ghana is depleting of nutrients and there is the need to restock the soil with nutrients, but the only way we can be able to do that is to test the soil and blend the fertilisers specific to the soil’s needs,’’ he stressed.
He said by this, fertiliser could be blended for every crop, as each crop required certain nutrients to be able to give the maximum yield.
Rev. Benson said with the coming of Glofert, it would scale down the importation of already blended fertilisers, adding that, previously Ghana was importing everything blended, now, there are in-house companies that have the capacity to produce fertilisers to meet the special requirements of farmers.
Mr Patrice Annequin of IFDC, said his outfit would enlighten all stakeholders that farmers could not afford to use blanket fertilisers and there must be new ways to fine-tune the requirement of the crops, depending on the soil, so that farmers could get maximum yields from the use of fertilisers.
He explained that Ghana was at the forefront of the new approach by which they would provide the farmers with more suitable fertilisers to improve crop production.
He said Ghana has moved from the use of blanket fertiliser to balanced fertilisers, which is an indication that for the first time, farmers in Ghana would use different types of fertilisers depending on the crops and the region in which they are producing the crops.
GNA
