Oil Palm Farmers Benefit From YARA Training

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Some officials of YARA Ghana displaying some features of the products

Yara Ghana Limited, a leading mineral fertilizer company, has embarked on an oil palm training programme aimed at promoting the suitability of oil palm production in Ghana through the improvement of yield and the integration of the different facets of the industry.

The programme, which is a collaboration with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) in the Eastern, Central and Western Regions, has so far covered four districts in the Western Region namely Mpohor, Wassa West, Wassa East and Agona Nkwanta and seven districts in the Central Region.

Participants at the training programme were introduced to the new YaraMila Palmae fertilizer.

The YaraMila Palmae is an NPK fertilizer uniquely designed for Oil Palm nutrition that also has additional Magnesium and Boron needed in oil palm nutrition as trace elements to improve on the current average yield of 5mt per hectare to about 20mt per hectare.

The YaraMila Palmae has the potential to increase Ghana?s total volume for oil palm export, meet local demand and ultimately increase farmer incomes.

Addressing the media after the training workshop, Henry Otoo, Market Development Manager of Yara Ghana, said ?oil palm is fast becoming an indispensable crop, which is catching up on the global scene it is therefore important to strategically position the  players of the industry, especially farmers to enable them rightfully benefit from the imminent growth of the sector?.

He said since 1984 the price of cocoa has been falling consistently by an average of some 1.2 percent yearly till it peaked in 2003, declined again and peaked once more in 2008 (FAO, 2009) whereas that of oil palm has been increasing consistently since 2002 (USD 400/Mt) to USD 1200 in 2010 (MPOB,2012).

?Ghana has a total of 387,000 hectares of oil palm under cultivation which forms just seven percent of the total production within the West African sub-region. The average yield per hectare of oil palm is between 3-7Mt/ha compared to that of 20-33 Mt/ha in Malaysia, where only 26% of production takes place. Ghana currently has an unmet demand of 35,000 tons of palm oil. The estimated unmet demand in the ECOWAS sub-region alone is 850,000 tons (SRID, 2010)?.

According to Mr. Otoo, the yield per hectare in Ghana is quite low compared to other oil palm producing countries.

He attributed this to the underutilization of fertilizer in the sector.

A business desk report

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