Agricultural Issues
Food Facility Program to Increase Millet and Sorghum Production
A day's workshop has been held in Bolgatanga to empower stakeholders, especially farmers, to grow sorghum and millet on large scale under the Food Facility Project funded by the European Union and International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD).
The project is to empower rural women and men in West African Countries to increase income and food security through strengthened capacity to achieve higher and sustainable yields in sorghum and millet production.
COCOBOD Launches Cocoalink; a New Extension Service for Cocoa Farmers
Myjoyonline.com
The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) in partnership with Hershey Company and the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) has launched a new mobile telephony system dubbed “CocoaLink - Connecting Cocoa Communities” to deliver timely farming, social and marketing information to cocoa farmers to improve their income and livelihoods.
Through this program, cocoa farmers will receive and share practical information with experts on new farming techniques, crop disease prevention, post-harvest production and crop marketing through voice and SMS text messages delivered in their local languages or English.
Poverty Reduction in Northern Ghana Needs Concerted Efforts - Director
Ghana News Agency
Poverty reduction and the transformation of livelihoods in Northern Ghana can only be achieved through the concerted efforts of all stakeholders in the agriculture sector.
This will help reverse the resultant low agriculture productivity through the introduction of new technologies.
Dr Stephen Nutsugah, Director of the Savannah Agriculture Institute (SARI), made this observation at a two-day consultative meeting on Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), organized by SARI in collaboration with the Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) in Tamale on Thursday.
Liberia: Govt., Ghana Partners on Agric Development.
AllAfrica.com
The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan has brokered the deal that will see governments of Ghana and the Republic of Liberia jointly develop, promote and implement research activities to improve their agricultural sectors.
The agreement was forged through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by representatives of Ghana and Liberia. The IITA, through its Sustainable Tree Crops Program (STCP), in collaboration with the Ghana Cocoa Board facilitated the development and signing of the agreement. IITA/STCP works in both countries.
Food Crisis/ Security
IMF Warns Food Prices to Stay High
The world faces a prolonged period of high food prices, the International Monetary Fund has warned, arguing that the main reason for the sharp rise in agricultural commodities prices is a structural shift in demand.
The warning came as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) index of global food prices rose to a record high in February, the eighth consecutive monthly increase.
In an article published on Thursday, IMF commodities economists wrote that “the world may need to get used to higher food prices”.
High Food Prices and Popular Uprisings – Is Ghana at Risk?
The ongoing popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East poses the question if other developing countries, including Ghana, may experience similar or other forms of uprisings in the light of the imminent global food crisis of 2011.
In order to answer this question one needs to look at the underlying drivers for the uprisings in both 2008 and now.