Accra, June 17, 2015. Current trends in the production of vegetable crops for both the domestic and export market show certain challenges especially with the European Union (EU) standards. As a result, some stringent actions need to be taken to ensure the sector improves on the adoption of good agricultural practices and also adopt new ways of doing business. It is in this light that GhanaVeg and the Institute of Applied Science and Technology,  held a half day forum to discuss and share ongoing research interventions to assuage this prevalent situation.
The forum was designed to bring together researchers and key players from the vegetable sector to discuss some research gaps and find possible solutions to tackle the challenges that the sector faces. Such challenges would then be prioritized for support under the GhanaVeg R&D Innovation Fund. The Fund has been designed to assist private organisation and their research partners to collaboratively solve real world challenges through innovative research ideas.
The Program Leader of GhanaVeg, Mr. Joep van den Broek said research is relevant in addressing the challenges that the commercial vegetable sector faces in terms of pest, diseases, soil and climatic change. This kind of research should improve the quality of produce in the sector for a better and healthy lifestyle, in addition to creating economic opportunities for the private sector.
Speaking on the theme “Demand Driven research for a Private sector-Led Growth in Ghana’s vegetable Sector”, Mr. van den Broek said, GhanaVeg has a mandate to ensure the commercial vegetable sector works effectively to meet local and international market demands. This is because there are readily available markets for produce but exporters are not meeting the demand due to poor agricultural practices. Such produce are ultimately prevented from entering the largely lucrative EU market.
He reiterated that research is a sure way to understanding and adopting innovative technologies to improve this sector, making it more innovative, competitive and efficient to meet the demands of the export market. Locally, this should boost the confidence of the Ghanaian vegetable consumers and increase the consumption of vegetables in Ghana’’, he said.
The Chairperson for the forum and himself a Project Development Specialist, Mr. Adu-Mensah also entreated research institutions to harness their intellectual resources to improve upon the sector as it stands the chance of alleviating poverty in Ghana especially for farmers. According to him, European countries invest so much effort, logistics, time and resources into agriculture but the reverse is what we see in Ghana and Africa at large. “We have to move from the ancient way of farming and see agriculture as a business venture. This is the only way we can make progress”

He remarked that sustainable modernization of the food and agriculture, can only occur  when productivity and production improvement are based on strategic thinking, service and technology.