The tomato industry in ghana – fundamental challenges, surmounting strategies and perspectives. - a review

In recent years, Ghana has been cited in several local Newspapers as the second largest consumer of paste tomato in the world. According to the Ghana National Tomato Producers’ Federation, Ghana imports up to 7,000 metric tons (t) of fresh tomato per month from its neighbors, along with 27,000 t of processed tomato from Europe. It is a common practice for the Ghanaian tomato marketers called “market queens” to travel all the way to neighboring Burkina Faso, usually in March and May, to scout for tomatoes, encountering several hazards on the highways. The collapse of the tomato industry in northern Ghana is associated with a complex of biotic, abiotic and institutional challenges. The event adversely affected the fortunes of thousands of farmers and other stakeholders and their families for whom, tomato then dubbed “red cocaine” production has for several decades constituted a major source of income. The remote causes of the disaster in the tomato industry included a pandemic in all the growing areas in the north of Ghana referred to as “the Tomato Disease Complex” - the result of the adverse influence of excessive build up of soil nematodes and uncontrollable proliferation of fungal, bacterial, viral and other diseases in all the major growing areas in northern Ghana. “The Tomato Disease Complex” in some seasons, culminated into total crop failures for countless farmers, resulting in bankruptcy and several reported cases of attempted suicide. This work reviews the key challenges that have confronted the tomato industry in Ghana over the last three decades and proposes fundamental pathways for the way forward for this industry to develop to its full potential and contribute more significantly to the growth of the economy of Ghana.