No shortage of maize seeds – NASTAG insists

The National Seed Trade Association of Ghana (NASTAG) says there is no shortage of maize seeds in the country.

This follows reports that the shortage of maize seeds was disrupting planting in Sissala.

NASTAG is the apex body of all the seed value chain actors both private and public and has members in all the 16 regions and delivering good products and services to farmers in the country.

President of NASTAG, Dr Amos Rutherford Azinu in a statement on Friday said the association’s research in communities such as Tumu, Gwollu, Welembelle among others, revealed that there is no shortage of maize seed.

“The only possible explanation for the news report is that some farmers have been unable to get the specific brand of maize seed that they wanted, which are foreign seeds or imported seeds,” he added.

Dr Azinu has therefore asked farmers who were unable to get their preferred brand of foreign maize seed to adopt and adapt local brands that were available and not only cheap compared to imported ones.

He said there were local hybrid seed maize that had been produced by NASTAG members, most of which had their unique traits such as climate-smart, disease tolerance, nitrogen-water use efficiency, pro-vitamin A etc.

“However, for some time now there are seed merchants who have emerged in the industry due to bad implementation of a policy, they are only interested in seed importation and refuse to invest in local seed production,” he added.

Dr Azinu said these seed merchants only exploited farmers under the narrative that locally produced maize hybrids were not good in quality.

“This is an attempt to collapse local seed business because they have no investment in the industry,” he added.

Dr Azinu said that in the past three years, members of NASTAG had invested in infrastructure such as seed processing equipment, irrigation facilities, human resources and were leading the production and dissemination of locally bred hybrid maize varieties, even though most of them were yet to receive full payment of seed supplied under the government programme ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ from 2020 to 2021 farming season.

The post No shortage of maize seeds – NASTAG insists appeared first on Citinewsroom - Comprehensive News in Ghana.

Read Full Story