PLANTATION

Industrial Plantation: Kwae and Okumaning estates

GOPDC owns two industrial plantations.

The Kwae estate is located near Kade, in the Eastern Region of Ghana, and has a total concession of 8,000 ha, of which approximately 4,000 (4,171ha) ha are developed. Besides the nucleus estate, there are 314 ha of smallholdings within the concession. In addition to the above, the concession locates housing for Junior Staff, Senior Staff and Management Staff and all industrial and social infrastructures required for the well functioning of such an industrial complex.

The second industrial plantation is the Okumaning estate which has a total concession of 5200 ha, of which since 2002 almost 2,000 ha have been developed.

Nursery

Seed nuts are purchased from Benin (Pobé) or Ivory Coast (Lamé). After germination in a germination room, the seed nuts are planted in the pre-nursery. After 4 months of growth, the seedlings will further develop for 6 months in the main nursery before being transplanted into the field. To save water, GOPDC has established an innovative system of dripping-irrigation for the nursery. It has resulted in a decrease of about 80% of the water consumption.

Outgrower Scheme

Besides the industrial plantation, GOPDC has also a vast outgrower scheme around the Kwae estate. Outgrowers are farmers who cultivate oil palm under a contract for GOPDC.

The contract between GOPDC and the farmer stipulates that GOPDC provides inputs on credit to the farmer (at cost), and the farmer in return supplies 100% of the production of the GOPDC planting material to the company. A percentage of the value of the supplied crop is used for loan servicing. The contract is on a co-financing basis: the farmers put up a portion of the investment cost at planting time. The remaining part of the investment is on a loan basis. Farmers enjoy a seven-year grace period on their loan, and start repayment when the trees are in full production. The inputs provided to the farmer comprise palm seedlings, organic fertilizer, technical assistance and organic pest management.

Currently about 7,000 farmers produce on contract for the Company. They represent the majority of the planted area with 13, 946 ha under cultivation. These individual farmers cultivate small parcels of land within a radius of 30 km from the GOPDC nucleus estate and processing facility.

GOPDC operates 31 collection centres in its catchment area to facilitate the timely collection of the crop of the outgrowers. Every centre is responsible for the collection of the harvest of an average of 220 farmers. Therefore, each center has farm tractors that can go up to the farm gate to collect the crop. A truck of GOPDC collects the containers and brings them to the mill.

GOPDC also provides extension services to the outgrowers farms. The catchment’s area is divided into 12 districts with an extension officer at the head of each of them. This enables a real follow-up of plots and therefore better performances.  

Since September 2007, GOPDC is creating a new outgrower scheme around the Okumaning estate. So far, a team has been going round to give information about the scheme, to measure the interest of surrounding villages and to register farmers who want to participate. The first outgrower farms in this area will be planted this year.

Geographic Information System

Based upon recent satellite images and ground truth observations, GOPDC has build a unique Geographic Information System (GIS) to make an inventory of all the farms in the area. This system allows management to follow up productivity up to plot level and to trace back all fruit that arrives at the GOPDC mill. Linked with the farmers' accounts, it is a powerful management tool for the traceability and follow-up of each individual farm, which is necessary for the organic certification of the 7,000 farmers.

So far, we have 2% of registered outgrower farms as outstanding farms for inventory. For easier and faster updating the system and also for the ease and reliability of field inspections by EcoCert and others, GOPDC is moving further to Mobile GIS.

Pest Control

The main pests for oil palm plantations in West Africa are the beetle Oryctes rhinoceros (damage on young palms), the fungus Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. elaeidis (fusariosis, wilt) and the leaf miner Coelaenomenodera lameensis (rapid defoliation of older palms).

The incidence of Oryctes rhinoceros can be managed by good agricultural practices and hand-picking with a sharp pin with a hook.

While Fusariosis has been tackled by an intensive selection programme, resulting in Fusariosis resistant trees, no solution has been found yet for the leaf miner. Although some oil palm breeding lines seem to be more resistant against the leaf miner, no real research has been done to produce a leaf miner resistant tree. Siat in co-operation with POBE in the republic of Benin and CIRAD-CP of France have started now negotiations to start up a breeding programme to end up with wilt and leaf miner resistant trees.