Coca Cola Bottling Company Ltd, manufacturers of soft drink and beverages, is to purchase pineapples from Ghana for processing into the company’s products.

This came to light during the recent trip of the Vice-President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, to the USA. He had been invited by the Department of Pan-African Studies and the College of Arts and Science of the University of Louisville in Kentucky to deliver a lecture on the theme, “The Challenges of Good Governance in Africa”.

Briefing journalists at the Castle, Osu, in Accra yesterday, the Spokesperson for the Vice-President, Mr John Jinapor, said the company also indicated its interest in supporting the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) sector in the government’s agenda to develop agriculture in the country.

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One of the less-popular towns of Nigeria, Shonga, is gradually fast becoming a food hub in both Nigeria and Africa, thanks to white Zimbabwean farmers expelled by Robert Mugabe in early 2000.

During the heightened land ownership and race row in Zimbabwe that had since crippled the southern African country’s economy, the government of Kwara State in Nigeria banked on the opportunity to lure the displaced farmers to Shonga in what is now deemed a ‘success’ by observers.

“We arrived to virgin bush. We were basically just given GPS points, told to mark them out, clear the bush and find water, build the house, build the sheds, and import cattle. It was right from the grassroots and it was fun. We all lived in tents for a while,” said Irvin Reid, one of the Zimbabwean farmers.

Less than five years, the lands are now cultivable and both locals and farmers are now reaping the fruits of their labour.

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With Swaziland about to establish a tomato production project, the Swaziland Investment Promotion Authority (SIPA) feels a partnership with Limpopo’s Neotech Industries would be beneficial.

Swaziland High Commissioner to South Africa Muntu Mswane said the Swazi delegation’s outside mission to Limpopo should culminate in the country being able to draw lessons from the various industries operating in the province.
“We have travelled, heard and seen. Now, down the line we’ll be able to implement what we’ve learnt,” he said on Tuesday during the 28-man delegation’s visit to Neotech Industries, a tomato processing plant in Tzaneen, Limpopo.

“Swaziland is not self-sufficient in food production and we can only learn. I want to believe that with projects such as our LUSIP (Lower Usutu Smallholder Irrigation Programme) something will come out of it.”

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The 2010 Budget Statement highlights the government’s support for the poultry industry.

Agriculture, with emphasis on the local production of rice, fish, poultry and livestock, has been handed a massive impetus in the government’s 2010 budget and financial statement, reports Modern Ghana.

The measures, as contained in the budget statement read by the Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Dr Kwabena Duffuor, included the restoration of duties on imported rice, poultry, wheat, yellow maize and vegetable oil that were removed during the food crisis of 2008.

With an overall objective to modernise agriculture, the budget introduced a number of initiatives to also change the face of rural Ghana, increase the scale of production and productivity, enhance food security, create employment opportunities and cut down on the use of foreign exchange for food imports.

To cut down on imports of poultry and fish into the country, Dr Duffuor hinted that the government would levy duties on those imports and support local production, adding that “The target is that Ghana should be able to meet the domestic demand for fish and poultry by the year 2012″.
ThePoultrySite News Desk

Twenty families, who moved to the Aussenkehr table grape farming area for the initial purpose of resettlement, are producing high quality grapes and other crops.

The group of small-scale farmers has been granted four hectares of commercial land per family since the 1990s to work under the agriculture ministry’s Orange River Irrigation Project (ORIP), formerly developed under the now defunct Namibia Development Corporation (NDC).

Farmers Reinhold Mukuwe and Risto Nambase, originally from the Kavango Region, said they responded to an invitation for application sent out by the ministry, and attended training in grape farming from 2001 to 2003.

“After that, we were supposed to be resettled, but the conditions changed,” said Nambase.

According to him, the small-scale farmers were first given an option to buy land granted to Government by the owner of the Aussenkehr farm, Disan Viseljivec from Yugoslavia, but these farmers eventually entered into a lease agreement of the plots of land with Government.

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