Business Planning, Rising From The Ashes And Potassium Fertilizer

Congratulations to the University of the West Indies (UWI) who have won a business planning competition with its development of a fictitious ginger factory. Last weekend more than 300 students across 21 teams from black colleges and universities gathered in Atlanta, USA, to participate in the Opportunity Funding Cooperative Venture Challenge, an entrepreneurship competition which has been running for the last ten years. Four students from the Mona School of Business at UWI won with a project to revitalise the Jamaican ginger industry. It will be interesting to see whether this project translates into real life.

Things are looking up for Sierra Leone. Its ginger industry was destroyed by the 11-year civil war and has taken the best part of a decade to recover with the help of the United Nations. Rising populations and incomes has created a high demand for ginger both locally and across West Africa. Sierra Leone has preferential access across this wider region through its membership of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States). The country also has duty-free access to both the EU and the US. This is a story that I shall return to in the near future.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) has reported that China's agricultural sector will face rising costs in 2011. A major contributor to the increased costs will be global fertilizer prices. This will mean higher costs for ginger which is grown with potassium fertilizer to boost the size, and hence the yield, of the rhizomes. Although China does produce its own potassium fertilizer, the majority of its requirements must be met by imports. Global prices of potash (the principal source of potassium), along with other agricultural nutrients, have been rising to satisfy demand from a rapidly increasing world population and to compensate for poor harvests caused by inappropriate weather conditions. The increasing cost will also affect other ginger growing countries such as India which has to import all of its potassium. So, consumers and manufacturers be warned. Your ginger is going to cost more.