The Soya Value Chain Association of Ghana (SVCAG) has held a day’s consultative meeting in Tamale. The meeting primarily was aimed at improving livelihoods of members through access to investment opportunities and increasing soy production for local consumption and export.
It was held under the theme: “structuring operations for sustainable trade facilitation within the soya value chain,” and was sponsored by the German Government’s Development Co-operation office – GIZ.
The consultative meeting drew SVCAG members – soy farmers, aggregators, processors and other actors and NGO partners and financiers from all over the country to deliberate on issues such as input supply, financing, insurance, market access and pricing among other which are major huddles that confront the soya sector.
The meeting was held against the background that some farmers have access to credit, however this was fraught with several challenge that ended up defeating the objective for such initiatives, hence the association’s leadership, organized the forum as a structured platform towards providing alternatives to inputs supplies, and meeting other needs of the actors in a sustainable manner.
The Executive Secretary of the Soya Value Chain Association of Ghana (SVCAG), Mr. Yaw Afrifa who facilitated the meeting, urged the actors to begin to take actions from a business perspective.
According to him the ultimate aim of every soy farmer or other actors in the value chain must be –seeing growth in business, as such he said trade formulization among the value chain actors should be encouraged among them.
“An active trade formulization would help us find common grounds and together this can enable us address the major bottlenecks in the soya bean industry,” Mr. Afrifa said.
The SVCAG Executive Secretary mentioned that the association has two major decisions – to create opportunities for members to access agri-inputs at reduced prices for cultivation this year and secondly to boost production of soya beans in the next year.
“We are looking at getting these agri-inputs including seedlings at reduced prices for members, with a percentage of the dividends going to support the cause of the association,” Mr. Afrifa explained.
He was emphatic that having all the value chain actors working together will bring results thereby reducing the inefficiencies and other challenges, stressing that the agri-inputs and fertilizers should directly go directly to the stallholder farmers
The SVCAC, formed in 2018 is made up of researchers, seed producers, farmers and aggregators, soya oil and cake processors among others with the overall aim of deliberate advocacy, trade facilitation and business linkages and building the capacity of actors within the soya beans value chain.
