A 39 year old farmer Adamu Adama Nansia from Welembelle in the Sissala East Municipality would live with the pain of losing his over 2,500 tubers of yam and another 2,500 yam plants meant for cultivation after his 12 year old son name witheld on a trigger happy mission with ‘matches’ lit causing the barn to burn to ashes.

Report from Welembelle to 107.5FM in Tumu says Adamu who has been preparing his yam mounds left for the farm with his two sons aged 12 and 14 when the 12 year old who started playing with a matche stick in the barn ended up striking it to spark .The report added the boy upon realizing the danger attempted dousing the fire all alone until the father who saw the smoke rushed to the burning barn on their farmland 3kilometers from Welembelle and shouted the name of his son who came out to safety but had little to do and watched the tubers burn.
In an interview Mr Adamu Nansia, he said “i am thankful to God for my son’s life but indicated the loss is estimated to be around over Ten Thousand Ghana Cedis and now my yams i sold to feed my family including yam plants have all been burnt and gone”.He blames poor market of yam prices reason for keeping them.
A basin of tubers of yam now cost close to Four Hundred Ghana Cedis but some of the yam farmers are struggling to sell their produce.No help has reached the victim from NADMO as at the time of this report.

Yam as a major food stuff is eaten by many and Ghana is currently the leading exporter of yam (36 per cent of world exports) and it ranks second after pineapple among Ghana’s non-traditional exports (Asante et al; 2013). Out of the total agricultural land under cultivation (7,846,551ha), yam cultivation occupies 387,000ha representing 4.9% (MoFA, 2011). A total of 5,960,000MT of ware yam was produced in 2010 which came second to cassava of 13,504,000MT (MoFA, 2011).
Its importance lies in the fact that it serve as both food security and income generating crop. Its cultivation cuts across the forest, coastal savannah,
In 2014, worldwide production of yams was 68.1 million tonnes, led by Nigeria with 66% of the global total . Nigeria farmed yams on 5.4 million hectares, 70% of the world land area of 7.8 million hectares devoted to yam farming.
With support to yam farmers and favourable marketing climate,yam farmers says they can increase the production of various yam species.Sissala yam farmers time immemorial normally keep yams in barn on their farm as a storage and a holding place for the yam plants and the tubers.

By: Radford FM