378 Rebuilding West Africa’s food potential
had been promised a great deal of support and they originally had great confidence that their palms would
mature properly and yield in abundance. These smallholder farmers feel it is unreasonable for them to be
required to pay back the value of the palms when they have been unable to look after them or fertilize them
throughout their short lives. In addition, it will be much harder for the farmers to repay the amount owed to
PSI for their palms when the yields will be much lower than anticipated.In conclusion, the PSI programme was a successful, well-conceived project in its early years. There were
problems along the way, but a number of good quality hybrid Tenera oil palm seedlings were planted, to the
long-term benefit of the individual farmers, the economy and the nation. There are now 22 active nurseries
compared to the original 12, with another 11 in various stages of development. Given that the number of
nurseries has more than doubled, the budget demand will increase proportionally. However, the status of PSI
funding support has changed dramatically. Curiously, it seems that a huge capital investment was made in
setting up the new batch of nurseries just prior to the complete collapse of operational funding. It appears
somewhat inadvisable to make this level of capital investment without firm arrangement for an operational
budget over the following five years or more.The question now is what to do next? Is the continued operation and development of the PSI oil palm
project something the GoG is passionate and confident about? Is it something the government has
both the will and the means to properly fund on an ongoing and open-ended basis? Or has the project
already served its purpose sufficiently to seek an honourable withdrawal? The stated long-term target
was to plant 300 000 ha across the palm growing areas of Ghana, but does this have to be done by
the government?The initial planning called for establishing Corporate Village Enterprise Companies (COVES), each consisting
of landowners, farmers, and a milling company. The basic idea was to secure land for a nucleus estate of
5 000 ha, then boost fruit supply with smallholders’ schemes and purchasing from outgrowers. Central to
each COVE was a 20 TPH [tonne per hour] palm oil mill. A number of these COVES were planned around
the country. However, for whatever reason, none of these materialized. What has evolved is the installation
of a large number of independent nursery companies that supply seedlings to farmers in their localities but
that are sited in a widely spaced manner in order to cover as much of the region as possible. The only areas
where significant clusters have formed are around Kade, and north of Takoradi in the Western Region, and
in both instances there are plenty of large commercial mills already operating there.Unavailability of high-yielding planting material, poor agronomic practices, and cultivation by smallholdings
still characterize the oil palm industry and these are the main constraints to oil palm production. These
constraints have been the focus of policy interventions, including the medium-term objective of enhancing
smallholders’ access to credit, improved planting material, extension on improved agronomic practices
and capacity to expand farm size, through vigorous promotion of the established outgrower-nucleus
farmer linkages. Recently, the government’s policy on fertilizer subsidies has been a major intervention for
increasing productivity on oil palm farms. Other recent major government interventions in the oil palm
industry include:
(a) the Buabin Oil Palm Outgrowers Project (BOPOP), covering an area of 3 000 ha for 500 outgrowers;
(b) the Ghana Sumatra company that specialises in palm oil seeds increased palm oil seed production
capacity of OPRI from 2 million to 5 million seed nuts per year under the World Bank-sponsored
Agriculture Services Sub-Sector Investment Programme (AgSSIP); and
(c) the development of a master plan for the oil palm sector under Agence Française de Development
(AFD) with government-secured funds, including development of policy, strategy and implementation
manuals for tree crops.