Ghana: Plummeting profits drive tomato farmers to suicide
ACCRA: With cross-border price-undercutting, mounting debt and a lack of buyers, many tomato farmers in Ghana's Upper East Region are turning to suicide.
Maame Dufie, market queen at the Abeka Market in Accra. Market queens choose producers and set prices for agricultural goods in most of Ghana's markets. © Evans Mensah/IRIN
Three tomato farmers in the region committed suicide in 2008 and many others attempted to, according to the General Agriculture Workers Union.
Women who control produce, suppliers and prices throughout the country, buy tomatoes across the border in Burkina Faso at cheaper prices, leaving local farmers to watch their crops rot in the sun, farmers told IRIN.
