THE CONCEPT OF TOTAL COMMODITY UTILIZATION

A story was told of a man who owned an orange plantation farm in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana. The man entered into this kind of farming specialization because of his unflinching desire to produce insecticides out of the orange peels. The story teller confessed to have questioned the sanity of this farmer in his heart as he observed him throw away large quantities of fresh oranges away to rot. When he questioned the farmer on his reason for rendering tons of fresh oranges a waste, the farmer answered and said all he needed was the peels of the oranges for insecticides and not the pulp.

The story teller was astounded by the answer; though he appreciated the concept behind the orange peels, he saw another stream of income for this farmer apart from the peels which the farmer had completely been drunk with; and that was a fresh orange juice; He could sell these oranges to some fruit juice company to gain extra funds to support his insecticide business without loaning money from the banks. The farmer was obviously to drunk to see that.

This is a typical challenge for most Africans; we always seem to have a limited scope of things. Once we discover one way a material can be used we stick to that without any efforts to find out more usages that can be derived from the same product apart from what has already been discovered. What most of us call waste are actually the economic empowerment we need to remain prosperous. For example, when one visits a sawmill all one may see is a sawdust, a supposed waste which many used as a fuel for cooking while others may use it in filling an area where water springs from the ground to soak the water up so as to redeem that area from becoming muddy. But, another will visit that same sawmill and see that same sawdust but instead of a fuel or a soaking material that person may see a raw material for the production of mosquito coil. In China, sawdust is an essential commodity embraced with such respect because of its unimaginable economic prospects. The coils produced in China are imported into the country, Ghana, and Ghanaians fill China's economic basket continually with foreign currencies strengthening China's foreign reserves while weakening their own. Meanwhile, there are thousands upon thousands tons of sawdust all over the country without maximum patronage by some of our so call industrialists; at least I know some use the sawdust to breed mushrooms.

The reality is that we lack the concept of total commodity utility; hence we are unable to derive a lot of economic benefits from our scarce resources. We lack efficiency in our manufacturing or the secondary sector because we fail to make a lot of diversified benefits from a one resource. No wonder our competitors at the global market have upper hand over us. As our balance of trade remains ridiculously minimal as a well resourced country yet countries like South Korea and China with relatively low resources records higher results in terms of their balance of trade. This is greatly because of the concept of total commodity utilization, which is the exploration of all what a commodity has to offer and using all of these possible potentials of utility of that product to create a diversified manufacturing stronghold; a prospect for economic stability and higher standard of living in the country.

Just as many Ghanaians embrace fashion so they embrace business as well. Many Ghanaians love mass production in terms of fashion and in business they adopt this same concept. Once they know a product can be used for a particular thing those who have monopoly over that thing do not remain in that position for long before completion sets in; all of these companies involve in this one product becomes price takers instead of price makers owning to the reality that too much circulation makes the price go down. This is because somebody is not thinking deeply enough.

Fidel Y. Tetteh-ModernGhana.com