Many Ghanaians were encouraged to hear the authorities saying that they will overhaul the shea industry, and admitted that the sector faces some challenges including processing and domestication. Being a wild crop, about half of the expected produce is harvested annually, and the problems will be tackled holistically to encourage a higher percentage in production in the coming years. Farmers will be provided with protective clothing to guard them against snakes and insect bites, and the sector will be transformed into a major source of foreign exchange for the country in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food industries. A Sheanut Development Board would be established to help Ghana tap into the fast expanding global shea trade, which is projected to gross some 500 million dollars per annum within the next five years.

Some of us after reading the above statement realized that there was only one problem neglected over the years. And if solved, will lead to the solution of all the other challenges enumerated in the statement: processing, domestication and gathering the other 50% that rots in the bush every year. Like any other sector in the country, the solution lies with proper incentives; incentives that will release the energies of the village women and propel them to produce more. Providing the farmers with protective clothing to guard them against snakes and insect bites is desirable, but not enough to propel them to go for the other half that we desperately need for our foreign exchange since all farmers face snakes and insect bites. We must note that holding agricultural prices down, as we have been doing for ages, and forcing savings out of farmers (“surplus extraction”) is destructive of agricultural growth, and the growth has shown to be even important for industrialization.

What we need is an increase in the producer price of the crop, and let the villagers know that it is a cash crop and pay them cash crop money for their work. Could you believe that the village women don't get the equivalent of $10 for a bag of sheanut that takes at least two weeks of hard labour to produce? There is no woman that can carry a full load of a bag of sheanut on her head for a mile or 2 from the bush to her village. So, the load is divided into four or five manageable sizes and carried home one after the other, but that does not include wondering from one tree to another to gather the nuts. Subsequently, fire wood is collected from the bush to parboil the nuts, dry them for days and then crash them to separate the nuts from the shells. The yielded butter after processing the nut is used at the local level for cooking, soap making, oil lamps etc, and the surplus nuts they sell is exported by our country for foreign exchange. As far as these women are concerned, the other 50% of the nuts left in the bush every year is not needed, and if the government needs them, then it has to provide the necessary incentives that will translate into more revenue for the government, more employment and alleviate poverty at the grass roots level.

We cannot tell at the moment how much the government sells a bag of shea nut at the international market, but we do believe that if the government should be generous enough to give at least 25% of whatever amount realized from the sale to the farmers directly, the government will surely see the multiplier effect at the local level and a marked change in the number of bags that will be available for export the following year. And if the incentives are enticing enough, many will join those already in it including people from towns and cities that have never thought of being engaged in the business before. Gradually, it will come to a point where there will be a scramble for sheanut collection and attempts to edge out one another, as there will be no more sufficient amount of wild sheanuts for all of them. This situation will arise because there will be many collectors on the ground, and secondly, there will be fewer seeds left over or falling to the ground to germinate naturally to provide the next generation of shea treas. At this point, the era of domestication will begin to rear its lovely head, and it will be clear to both the authorities and the local people that if they want to ensure a steady flow of their income from the tree, then they will have no choice other than to domesticate it.

Initially, some farmers will embark on acquiring lands or use part of their farms for shea tree plantation, and the new plantations will exist side by side with the wild ones until there is no portion of the land with shea trees that does not belong to someone else. So, the authorities should encourage and provide the required "invisible hand" for the transformation, and embark on a research programme in order to have some proven results handy before they are pressed to provide them sooner or later. They should involve themselves on the ground now to determine the appropriate planting distance between the trees, maturity period, selection of high oil yielding species after knowing why some nuts produce more oil than others, why some trees produce more nuts than others, why some nuts are sweeter than others, the relationship between sweetness and the production of oil, why some are bigger than others, whether a particular type of soil found at a particular location has any impact on the nature of nuts borne by the trees, are there some diseases affecting their development and a host of questions and answers that must be made available by the agricultural scientists, as well as taping into the vast knowledge of the local people concerning the trees. In addition, the government should set up 1 or 2 kilometers open demonstration plantations at some vantage points to be emulated by all those who will be willing to enter into the business. But as much as possible, bureaucracy in all its forms should be reduced to the barest minimum in any of these exercises.

Author: Nouh Shuaib Jansbaka

Jansnuhu5000@yahoo.com