Exactly, with the addition that on a farming programme, the radiating filaments also determine when hectarage is rolled back or added on and the hub assembles, packs and dispatches produce. It’s actually two hubs-and-spokes super-imposed on each other, the production and concentration and the planning and marketing.

It could have worked, it should have worked. Lesson for the future- implementation is too important to be left in the hands of project co-ordinators alone, the beneficiary landed proprietors must be in a position to act to protect their livelihoods, to avert disaster whilst it is still possible to.

No industry can claim the distinction of being totally eco-friendly and plantations, which it’s claimed shrink bio-diversity, have the advantage of reducing the carbon footprint. Ghana, in particular, has been here before the large state plantations of the Nkrumah era attesting, and if for nothing at all they exhibited a boundless capacity to absorb labour and provide livelihoods.

Our grip on traditional institutions must be strenghtened- the pioneers of the palm oil trade had West Africa as the base of their operations and this spawned giant conglomerates, now South-East Asia is the focus of this trade and the originating region is a net importer, the ‘descendants’ coming back to organise their ‘sires’. To be competitive in a diminished traditional industry do we adopt the much-maligned practices of our inheritors, to wit, massive plantation development with processing units,which have ecological consequences? After all, oil palm is native to West Africa and can be regarded as its natural habitat- by plantations we are only giving it a helping hand.

Taking the battle to the ‘enemy’- frontiers are elatic these days, so much so that a ‘spoke’ can radiate into ‘hubs’ sited at what would have been regarded as immeasurable distances away. Now dispersion is not a constraint and the food value chain has very interesting ramifications, destinations at ‘astronomical’ distances…

This is an approach that has been tried and did not work- it amounts to thinking inside the box. Why does the planner seek to impose an involuntary restraint on the producers, when the market for the commodity is dynamic, not respecting national boundaries? The farmers should have an export marketing outlet that keys into the global market, so that the mechanisms which determine flows would work to mop up all their output. The bane of this approach is that after the first few harvests, the local farmers are no longer competitive even on the domestic market and large-scale imports resume, whereas left connected to international markets, there would have been that peculiar somebody somewhere, who would have found a use for their production, when brought to his attention. The name of the game is "Leave Your Options Open"..

The basis of the investment- the private proprietor on his own acres- seeking to extend a helping hand to those who can feed five times their current population but at present import two-thirds of their food, chose the hub-and- spoke as the vehicle of investment. Yes, "the centre holding" is half the battle as this exporter of success has recognized…..

Classical use of the ‘Colossus’ as a locomotive to the mutual benefit of all, conferring a species of economies-of-scale on the whole by bulk sourcing of inputs, combined releases of produce and co-ordinated production. Market penetration can be and is often assured….