Wa, GhanaMorgari Nurideen does not fit the stereotype of a traditional farmer. A former teacher, he changed careers in his 40's after working in an elementary school for all of his professional life. With his family's large plot of land in Northwestern Ghana, he went into maize, soya and rice seed farming, thinking that it would be a good way to make more money than the government paid him as a teacher. What he didn’t realize going into his new profession was just how inconsistent and daunting the seed market in Northern Ghana could be. Out of necessity, Morgari joined the Seed Growers Association of Wa--without the help of such an association, he says, he would never have been able to locate new markets to sell the seeds he had already harvested. Years and many harvests later, he's an executive of the association. Discussing the difficulties of finding stable seed markets, Morgari makes the point that it’s not just finding the information about those markets that’s important for the association but rather their ability to distribute that information to members in a timely, organized and inexpensive way. Mobile phones have helped this, eliminating the need to travel out to farms, but making calls to all the members is still expensive, the lines still unpredictable. After all of these years in the business, Morgari is still hoping that he lives to see a day when a simple seed producer can make decent money without having to face such inconsistency in the market.
