Mr Agyemang Kodom, the Chairman of the Kintampo South Cashew Farmers Association who made the appeal, said the farmers needed warehouses to dry and store cashew nuts.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Amoma-Nkwanta in the Kintampo District of the region, Mr Kodom regretted that because of lack of the storage facilities, many cashew farmers dried and stored their nuts in living rooms.

“This bad practice is affecting the health of these farmers because the nuts smell and attract insects too,” he said.

Mr Kodom said many of the farmers could not expand their farms because of the lack of space to dry and keep the nuts safe and appealed to the government to come to their aid.

“We need warehouses at the farm gates to store the nuts,” he said, explaining that the region remained the hub of cashew production, hence the need for the government to help add value to the raw cashew.

Mr Inusah Yakubu, a cashew dealer at the Lotus Exim Cashew Nuts, a cashew buying company in Techiman, said prices of cashew were low in the area because the nuts were poorly dried.

He said buyers needed quality nuts to meet international standards and advised the farmers to dry their nuts well to fetch them good prices.

The Bono Region produces more than 500,000 bags of cashew nuts in every crop season, and the farmers needed government support as well, he added.