FAGE Chairman urges youth to venture into mango cultivation
Mr George Kafui Agboso, the Chairman for the Federation of Association of Ghanaian Exporters (FAGE) has advised Ghanaian youth to enter into mango farming as it is one of the major exportable fruit crops in the country currently.
Mr Agboso gave the advice when he spoke to 62 second year Agricultural Science students of Sunyani Senior High School (SHS) during a field trip on Friday at Lacof Farms, a 35-acre mango plantation at Susuanho in the Tano North Municipality of the Ahafo Region.
The trip organised jointly by FAGE, the Sunyani Green Field Coorporative Association and the Agricultural Science Department of SUSEC formed part of the Association’s preparation to celebrate its 4th annual week scheduled from the Monday, July 15 to Friday July 19, 2019.
The celebration, on the theme “Mango-Ghana’s Green Gold, Opportunities in Value Addition’’ is intended to sensitise Ghanaians about the socio-economic benefits of mango as a cash crop and its business of cultivation, processing, packaging, transporting, wholesaling, retailing and consumption.
Mr Agboso, also a lecturer at the Catholic University College of Ghana (CUCG) at Fiapre in the Sunyani West District of Bono Region later in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) urged mango farmers to constantly spray their farms to suppress the bacterial black spot (BBS) disease to increase productivity.
He expressed worry that BBS and fruit flies disease were challenges affecting high productivity of mango cultivation, saying that if not effectively controlled they most often caused lower yield and consequently lower financial returns to the farmers.
Mr Eric Yaw Amponsah, an Agricultural Science tutor at SUSEC in another interview with the GNA suggested the need for government to review the curricula of Junior High School to include agriculture in the syllabus to provide the basis and solid foundation for prospective Agriculture Science students at the SHS level.
Mr Amponsah explained since the subject was part of integrated science at the JHS level, the number of students offering it at the SHS level had declined drastically and “that is not good for the nation’s socio-economic progress because agriculture is the backbone of the national economy”, he added.
Prince Obourba Asamoah, the President of SUSEC’s Agricultural Students Association appealed to government to grant scholarships “exclusively’ to agriculture science students as a motivation to entice more science students to pursue the course at both SHS and tertiary levels.
Source: GNA