SOME call it the wonder tree, but others think it is a utility crop because of the many uses it is put to. In the rural settings, the palm tree is regarded as a reliable crop and those who cultivate it never regret.
They can get palm fruit, palm oil and palm kernel oil. The branches can be used to weave baskets and provide shelter, while the leaves can be used to make brooms. In some cases, palm oil is applied to wounds to aid the healing process, as it is believed that unrefined palm oil has additional anti-microbial effect, although research has not clearly confirmed this.
When the crop reaches what may be termed its “menopause”, it is felled for palm wine, which may be drunk or distilled into the local gin popularly called ‘Akpeteshie’. One can get mushrooms from the decaying stem, which can also serve as manure and many other uses.
While the palm tree produces all the products listed above, through technology many value additions have been obtained from the cultivation of oil palm, such as soap, detergents, biscuits, ice cream, margarine, biodiesel, as a supplement in animal feed, candles, cosmetics, glue, lubricating grease, among others.
Given the immense usefulness of the crop and the numerous employment opportunities it can offer to the people, the government must give a serious consideration to launching an agricultural diversification programme to reduce the country’s over reliance on cocoa and fast dwindling natural resources and address the land tenure problems to facilitate large-scale cultivation of oil palm in the country.
The country’s reliance on cocoa over the past decades should seize because it has been realised that oil palm offers a better solution to the its foreign exchange constraints, since there is abundant demand and market for vegetable oils.
According to one palm oil expert, if Ghana should plant between 10,000 and 20,000 hectares of palm oil for the next 10 years, the country would not import oil but would rather increase its foreign exchange earnings.
In his opinion, if the Government desired to ensure access to cheap food and potable water, which should not be a challenge for the daily survival of the people, then the concept of integrated agriculture should not focus only on cocoa but also all food crops, including economic crops such as the oil palm, on which Malaysia concentrated after it had put to the background its reliance on cocoa.
Indeed, if Ghana had, over the years, pathetically failed to recognise the huge economic potential of this wonderful crop, the abundant successes obtained from the large-scale cultivation of the crop by Malaysia and Indonesia since the 1870s should be a motivating factor for the government to also show commitment to the cultivation of oil palm in the country.
The palm oil industry has been a historically significant part of Malaysia’s economy. The tree, originally from West Africa, mainly Ghana, was first introduced to Malaysia in the early 1870s as an ornamental plant. However, commercial planting of the tree took place in 1871, though the industry remained largely dormant until the 1960s when the Malaysian government launched an agricultural diversification programme to reduce the country’s economic dependence on rubber and tin.
In the late 1960s, the government introduced several land settlement schemes for planting oil palm as a means to raise landless farmers and smallholders out of poverty. Ever since, Malaysia has used the returns from oil palm to leap its economy from that of a developing one into an Asian Tiger.
Recognising the huge economic potential of the crop, the Malaysian government started refining the crude palm oil in the 1970s, marking the introduction of a wide range of processed palm oil products.
Today, the Malaysian palm oil industry has grown to produce 51 per cent of the world’s palm oil and 62 per cent of the world’s oil palm exports, making palm oil the country’s main agricultural produce that it exports.
Besides, it is said that in 2008 the country exported over 15 million tonnes of palm oil, majority of which went to China, the EU, Pakistan, the US, India and Japan, giving Malaysia $17.7 billion in export earnings in just one year.
At the height of the economic crisis which has crippled many economies across the world in the past two years, palm oil exports have played a significant role in saving the Malaysian economy from bankruptcy.
With Malaysia’s economy now slowly recovering from the recession, the palm oil industry is poised to play a leading role in its economic boom.
Looking at the immense economic gains Malaysia has derived from the cultivation of oil palm, there is so much that Ghana can also do to gain the same way. After all, the very oil palm that Malaysia has strategically used since 1870 to build its developing economy into an Asian Tiger was believed to have been obtained from Ghana, where successive governments terribly failed to recognise the economic potential of the crop.
Malaysia’s strategic use of the crop should encourage Ghana to either copy or show similar commitment to initiate steps aimed at ensuring the large-scale cultivation of this “crop of gold”.
It would be recalled that in the late 1960s Ghana’s first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, established many state farms, majority of which focused on the development of oil palm plantations, many of which later collapsed. In spite of that, if the net effect of oil palm cultivation is anything to go by, the country should reflect on Acheampong’s far-sighted “Operation Feed Yourself” programme, during which he also established many oil palm plantations in the country.
A typical example of Acheampong’s legacy is the Kwae Oil Palm Plantation located in three districts in the Eastern Region, namely, Kwaebibirem, Akyemmansa and Birim North. This plantation has gone through many transitions, from being state-owned to state-private partnership till today when it is wholly owned by a Belgian company, SIAT Ghana Limited, with many other plantations in Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria.
Distinctly, this plantation today remains the biggest and most successful oil palm plantation in Ghana, a situation that has arisen as a result of prudent managerial skills and the hard work of the management, staff and outgrowers of the company over the years.
What strikes many visitors to the Kwae plantation in recent times is the vigorous regeneration of the plantation through a replanting exercise. An oil palm plantation is said to have a 20-year cycle, at the end of which period if anybody wants the plantation to continue to be viable, it has to be replanted.
At Kwae, the green landscape offered by the replanting is something that those who cherish an environmentally friendly atmosphere must desire to see. This deliberate replanting exercise explains why most of the state oil palm plantations collapsed after the felling of the trees because the state did not have the wherewithal to undertake such capital and labour intensive exercise. The same elaborate exercise characterised the Kwamoso plantation in the Eastern Region.
The Ghana Oil Palm Development Company (GOPDC) is an integrated agro-industrial company specialising in the organic cultivation of oil palm, the extraction of crude oil and palm kernel oil and refining and fractionation of these produce.
It was initiated by the government in 1975 and privatised in 1995 to a Belgian company, SIAT Ghana Limited, which owned 80 per cent, with the government taking the remaining 20 per cent. However, the GOPDC is now wholly owned by SIAT and two other stakeholders.
The company, which has been able to sustain its lead in the field of oil palm cultivation in the country, currently has more than 21,000 hectares of oil palm plantation at Kwae, with more than 13,000 hectares being developed by over 5,000 outgrowers the company has contracted.
The company, with processing facilities, including a palm oil mill with a capacity of 60 metric tonnes (mt) per hour, a palm kernel crushing plant of 60mt per day, a refinery and fractionation plant with a capacity of 100mt per day and a total storage capacity of more than 13,000mt for finished products, is spread over a vast stretch of land with a radius of 30km.
It also has other facilities, including a tank farm in Tema with a capacity of 8,200mt, with an additional 12,000mt expansion capacity which is almost near completion.
The company’s plantations at the Kwae and the Okumaning estates are all certified organic, as no chemicals, pesticides or herbicides are used, resulting in a healthy superior quality product, making the company’s products attract a bonus on the world market.
The products include crude palm oil, palm kernel oil, palm kernel cake, refined bleached deodorised oil, refined palm kernel oil, free fatty acid, olein and supper olein and stearin.
The company, which planted its first sets of palm trees in 1976 and initiated the cultivation of an organic palm oil plantation in 1999, is already listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) and has created secure income for over 50,000 people.
In 2002, the plantation positioned itself to produce certified organic palm oil and palm kernel oil and since 1977 it has implemented a vast outgrower scheme.
As part of its focus on maintaining its market lead in the oil palm industry, the GOPDC also provides high-yielding seedlings, fertilisers and extension services for farmers on a loan basis and has created 31 collection centres in its catchment area to facilitate the collection of fruits from outgrowers.
Sharing the company’s strategic development with the Daily Graphic, the Managing Director, GOPDC, Mr John C. Inkumsah, said his outfit was fully committed to future sustainable growth of the oil palm business and, therefore, it would ensure that very high quality seeds were nursed and planted.
“The GOPDC is committed to quality products and has equipped its mill and refinery with state-of-the-art laboratory equipment to analyse each processing stage before the products reach consumers, both for domestic and industrial use,” he explained.
The adhere to strict environmental practices to ensure the conservation of the environment, Mr Inkumsah, said his outfit had installed an environmentally friendly 30-metric tonne boiler which produced 2.5 megawatts of electricity, adding that waste generated from the company’s plant was used as fuel for the boiler to reduce pollution.
He indicated that the company obtained 60 per cent of its energy requirement from the boiler, while 30 per cent was being supplied by the Electricity Company of Ghana, with the remaining 10 per cent produced by the genset.
“As part of our conservation action plan with the Ghana Wildlife Society, the management of GOPDC does not only ensure ecological monitoring of its plantation and but also undertakes regular reforestation activities and the planting of cover crops and indigenous trees along rivers within the company catchment areas,” he said, adding that it had also created awareness among its employees, schools and communities within its catchment area and constructed a third treatment pond to avoid any waste spillage.
Mr Inkumsah, who expressed delight at the achievements of the company over the decades, said as part of its corporate social responsibility, the GOPDC had constructed various water projects at Kusi, Anweam, Kwae and Jamestown, while, to improve educational standards in its catchment areas, it had constructed a classroom block at Anweam and a community library at Akwatia.
“We have also provided electricity and street lamps at Okumaning and undertaken the rehabilitation of various stretches of roads in our catchment areas, while we have facilitated the construction of an MTN antenna which has improved mobile phone business at Kwae and its environs,” he stressed.
On challenges, the MD said the company had been paying high sums of GH¢140 to farmers for their produce, an incentive that had attracted other oil palm growers from the Western Region to sell their produce to the company.
“In spite of these motivating prices, some of the outgrowers have always been diverting their produce for domestic consumption and selling it to poachers in neighbouring countries such as Togo who are ready to offer any amount,” he lamented.
He also mentioned the uprooting of seedlings by members of communities within the company’s catchment area.
In the opinion of the GOPDC MD,, Ghana stood to gain enormously if the Government could lend support to the Ghanaian and foreign investors interested in large-scale oil palm plantation, as well as provide subsidies for smallholders in the form of fertilisers and other farm inputs to enable them to expand their farms to lift poor farmers and their dependants from poverty.
“Ghana will not only reap huge foreign exchange from the export of palm oil but also be in a better position to tackle head-on the unemployment problem facing the people,” he stated.
Considering the huge economic potential of oil palm and the enormous employment avenues it can create for the teeming unemployed youth, it is time the Government introduced viable land settlement schemes and provided the necessary support in the form of subsidies as a means to raise landless farmers and smallholders out of poverty, given the fact there are vast tracts of land that are suitable for oil palm plantation in the country.
Furthermore, if the Government is, indeed, determined to increase the country’s foreign exchange and not solely depend on exports of cocoa and other natural resources, the resort to the large-scale cultivation of oil palm, as amply demonstrated in the country by the GOPDC and internationally by Malaysia and Indonesia, which have leaped their developing economies into Asian Tigers, then the diversification of agriculture must be given the needed attention at all cost.
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