By Daniel Agbesi Latsu
Dodi-Obuase (O/R), Oct. 09, GNA – Ginger farmers in the Kadjebi District of the Oti Region, are counting their losses as a strange disease suspected to be fungal infection affected their farms, leaving them with apprehension and hopelessness.
The Ghana News Agency’s (GNA) visit to some affected farms in the Poase-Cement, Obuase and Butabe areas of the district, revealed the devastating and sorrowful impact of the disease.
The disease makes the ginger plant turn yellowish and eats the rhizome making the seed to get rotten.
Mr Aliu Salisu, a 27-year-old farmer who cultivates a three-acre ginger farm, told GNA during the visit to his farm that he felt so sad about the attack, saying he had lost focus and did not know what to do.
Mr Salisu, a resident of Poase-Cement, said he sold his taxicab and invested the money into the farm with the hope of reaping increased yield, so that he could buy a new car, but things had been turned upside-down.
He called on the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to find a lasting solution to the problem, since the youth of the area depended on ginger farms for survival.
Mr Yakubu Muniru, a 29-year-old Senior High School graduate, who had planted a four-acre ginger farm, told GNA that it was the first time they were witnessing such a strange disease in the area.
Mr Muniru said he had invested GHS30,000.00 into the ginger farm during the season in anticipating that there would be a good harvest, but all the investment had gone into oblivion.
“The government through the Department of Food and Agriculture should help us find the resistance to the disease as this area that is the work of the youth,” he said.
Mr Muniru, also a resident of Poase-Cement, said finding a solution to the disease would also avert possible migration of the youth of the area to urban centres in search of non-existent jobs for survival.
Mr Mutakilu Tsadenu, Assemblyman for Butabe and Obuase Electoral Area, who led GNA to some of the affected farms, said the disease had affected many farms including his.
He said ginger farming had become the main source of income to the youths in the area and that it was “unfortunate that this year over one hundred acres of farms were destroyed by the strange disease.”
Mr. Tsadenu said, “there are some homes that cannot even feed three times daily due to the situation. I am therefore pleading with the government and other benevolent organisations to please come to our aid,” he said.
“If there is any relief package, be it cash or food item to sustain these affected families, then it should come,” Mr Tsadenu appealed.
The Butabe and Obusase Assemblyman, who had five-acre ginger farm at Butabe pleaded with the Department of Food and Agriculture to intervene and find lasting solutions to the problem as the calamity might result in rural-urban migration.
Mr Besa Akpalu, the Kadjebi District Director, Department of Food and Agriculture, when contacted by GNA, said the department was aware of the infection and that they suspected it to be a fungal disease.
He said samples of the affected plants and rhizomes had been sent to the Pokuase Agricultural Research Centre for investigation and confirmation of the actual disease.
Mr Akpalu assured the farmers of finding a lasting solution to the problem.
GNA