Pwalugu Tomato Factory faces closure

Story: Benjamin X. Glover, Pwalugu

THE Northern Star Tomato Factory at Pwalugu in the Upper East Region faces imminent closure due to the refusal of local farmers to sell tomatoes to the factory.
The Managing Director of the company, Mr Kwame Bonsu, told the Daily Graphic at Pwalugu on Monday that the factory was operating at 40 per cent capacity following the decision of the tomato farmers to sell their produce to market queens from Accra and to local consumers instead of the factory.
He was reacting to earlier reports that the local farmers had refused to respect the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding signed last year between the factory and the farmers.
He said prior to the planting season, the management provided the farmers with high yielding seeds and entered into an agreement with them to supply the factory with tomatoes at an agreed price. But when harvest was due, the farmers reneged on the agreement and refused to sell to the factory.
“The bottom line is that they are getting a better price from the market women even though we have an MoU with them to sell to us,” Mr Bonsu said.
Asked how much the company was offering, Mr Bonsu said currently the management was offering farmers GH¢4.00 per 40 kilogrammes of tomatoes. In addition, he said, the company had taken over the cost of transporting the produce from the farm gates to the factory and had also supplied them with plastic crates to make transportation easy.
In reaction, some of the farmers in the Kassena-Nankana District told the Daily Graphic that the price being offered them by the factory was low, stressing that they would run at a loss if they sold their produce at that price.
“Some of us cannot pay the huge loans we invested in our ventures, should we go by the price being offered by the factory at Pwalugu.”
They denied the assertion by Mr Bonsu that the factory supported them with inputs.
According to their spokesman, “the agreement was that the factory should assist us with inputs including fertilisers, chemicals and land preparation. However, after nursing our seeds and preparing them for planting, the floods that hit the region destroyed everything. We went back to the factory for assistance but to no avail. We, therefore, had to fall on the banks and other financial institutions for loans to cultivate the crop. We are ready to sell to the factory if they are prepared to increase the price from GH¢ 4.00 to GH¢5.00 per 40 kilogrammes of tomatoes”.
But Mr Bonsu described the farmers’ decision as a short-sighted one that could lead to the eventual collapse of the factory.
“It is the responsibility of the farmers to feed the factory. Taking the produce to the market women does not support the reasons why the government decided to support the farmers, revive the factory and thereby create more jobs for the people,” he said.