Photo of a rubber plantation
Some rubber farmers in the Nzema enclave, have called on the Tree Crop Development Authority (TCDA) to license and regulate activities of stakeholders in the rubber production value chain to help protect the interest of all players particularly farmers, traders, and aggregators.
Yirenkyi Ansah, who spoke to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on behalf of his colleague farmers, said some local rubber processing factories had taken advantage of the unregulated sector to pay unfair prices for raw materials supplied to them.
He said the situation was having a negative impact on their livelihoods, making some of them to sell off their farms to illegal miners.
“Most rubber processing factories in Ghana now are without their own plantation or with plantations that cannot feed even a quarter of their factory’s capacity, so they mostly depend on farmers for direct supply or through traders and aggregators.
“However, these processors are unwilling to offer reasonable prices that can take care of the cost components of the plantation, making the rubber trading business among local processors unprofitable,” he stated.
He also mentioned other challenges like the delay in payment by local processors for supply made to them, and the inadequate capacity to process the raw materials.
He said: “One of the reasons why we prefer to trade with exporters of raw rubber rather than supplying to local processors is a lack of cooperation and compromise between us and them, and they have turned deaf ears to our genuine concerns.”
The farmers, therefore, called on the TCDA and other relevant authorities to take steps to regularise the rubber production sector to benefit every stakeholder in the value chain and help grow the industry.
“We are calling on the Tree Crop Development Authority to take careful steps to license and regulate the rubber industry to protect all actors including farmers and traders whose activities impact the economic life of the rural communities and directly affect production,” they added.
