Some farmers in the Wa West District of the Upper West Region are taking to cashew farming in recent time after discovering the benefits of cashew farming far outweighs cocoa anytime.

The government of Ghana in a bit to promote cashew cultivation set up the cashew development project (CDP) in 2002. Many Northern farmers are venturing into the sector as a result.

Moses Dery Biekyile, one of the cashew farmers in Bankpama told drumbeats Kunta Lawrence that he started farming cashew some ten years ago. “We realized that if we farm cashew here in the north, it will go a long way to reduce our poverty and minimize the way our youth travel to the South in search for jobs” he said as he works on his five acre cashew farm.

Moses Dery is contemplating of increasing his farm size to ten acres in the next year. Emmanuel Maaliyel also owns four acres of young cashew farm. He abandoned his cocoa farm in the south to farm cashew in the Upper West Region. Emmanuel indicated that getting the right seeds is their major challenge so far. “I traveled to Sampa in the Bong Ahafo Region to beg farmers to sell the cashew seeds for me this year” he said.

President Nana Akufo Addo on February 10, 2018  launched a ten year cashew development plan at Wenchi in the Bong Ahafo region which seeks to improve production, research method and processing technology as well as create market linkages along the production value chain.
Under the plan, MMDCEs have been tasked to oversee the production of seedling to boost production.
Mr Joseph Kambunaba, the Wa West District Director of Agriculture disclosed that the District has nursed 80,000 cashew seedlings at the Ga Community under the planting for Export and Rural Development which will be distributed to cashew farmers in the District for free.
“We actually targeted 120,000 seedlings this year, but because time is not on our side we had nursed the 80,000 for now, I went to Sampa with the DCE to buy the seeds”, he said

Mr Kambunaba advised the youths to stop migrating to urban areas in search of greener pastures but rather venture into cashew farming to ameliorate their situations. “A bag of cocoa is ¢650 and one bag of cashew is ¢1,005, so I can just say that the North here we are now in good business and we have the land too, we are helping the youth and market would not be a problem”.
Source: drumbeatsgh.com/ Kunta Lawrence Nebadaar.