\u201cMango is seasonal and it will interest you to know that throughout the world , Ghana is the only country that has two seasons of mangoes and even with the two seasons, we produce mangoes only twelve weeks out of the 52 weeks of the year, so that has been a seasonal and a periodic activity. Every year, we would have to import mangoes from the other parts of the world when Ghana is not in season\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr. Djimatey explained that the situation has forced the company to set up factories in Egypt and Brazil in order to meet the demands of the European market.<\/p>\n According to him, Ghanaian farmers are also unable to produce pineapples and mangoes out of season because \u201cthey do not get the necessary support from policy makers.\u201d<\/p>\n He further explained that the problem is rife in Ghana because \u201cwe have a challenging land tenure system since some farmers tend to sell their lands to estate developers…”<\/p>\n He believes the \u201cmindset of Ghanaian farmers towards agriculture\u201d is also not helping the situation.<\/p>\n Asked whether there is a possibility for the country to produce mangoes out of season to address the problem, Mr. Djimatey responded in the affirmative, saying the situation\u00a0can be improved if Ghana \u201cimproves its irrigation system.\u201d<\/p>\n “Not much work has been done on that… I think currently there are a group of people who doing some work to see how mangoes can be produced in Ghana,” he added.<\/p>\n Implications<\/strong><\/p>\n The situation has contributed to the free fall of the cedi as millions of dollars are spent on the imports.<\/p>\n It has also led to the creation of jobs for the economies where the imports are coming from.<\/p>\n Blue Skies has employed over 3,000 Ghanaians comprising causal staff and permanent staff but Mr. Djimatey hinted there is a high possibility that Blue Skies might reduce its size of business in Ghana, and possibly start factories in other countries such as Ivory Coast and Senegal if immediate measures are not taken to rectify the problem.<\/p>\n \u201cBlue Skies is not a father Christmas. It is a business and definitely with these challenges, any business owner or any person will look into details and see where it can make profit.\u201d<\/p>\n He revealed that several attempts to get the Ministry of Agriculture to address the problem also proved futile after they were given assurances in various meetings.<\/p>\n Way Forward<\/strong><\/p>\n Proffering solutions to the problem, Mr Djimatey emphasized the need for the Ghana Education Service (GES), to place relevance on science related subjects in various schools in order to sharpen students\u2019 knowledge in agriculture.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to do agriculture science as a subject in the schools, knowing very well that not everybody who will finish from the JHS will go to the university.We should have agriculture as a subject so that people will learn the rudiments of farming, maybe poultry or any other thing so that even if we are not able to move forward on the academic calendar, people will have a future to look at in the area of agriculture which is our God-given potential and an area for us to exploit”.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the exciting things about agriculture is that, you can be a teacher and still own a farm, you can be a bank manager to have a farm so why are we abandoning agriculture which is the biggest part of the economy,” he argued.<\/p>\n Statistics indicate that the market for pineapple is worth about 1 billion pounds while that of bananas is 3.5 billion pounds.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Marian Efe Ansah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana![\"\"](\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Blue-Skies-drink.jpg\")
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