Agricultural News
Ghana Completes Agricultural Equipment Deal with Brazil
Spyghana.com
Brazil has approved Ghana’s request for the supply of equipment to mechanize the country’s agricultural sector. This follows a meeting in Brasilia between Vice President John Dramani Mahama and Mr. Pepe Vargas, Minister of Agrarian Development of Brazil. These were contained in a statement issued from the Office of the Vice President in Accra on Wednesday, copied to the Ghana News Agency (GNA). Mr. Vargas told Vice President Mahama that Brazil, in line with her earlier commitments, was ready to provide funds for the supply of Brazilian agricultural machinery and equipment to Ghana. [more]
Agricultural Funds Underutilized
Spyghana.com
Huge sums of funds earmarked for the development of the Agricultural sector by Donor Agencies and other Financial Institutions (FIs) in the country are mostly underutilized, B&FT has learnt. In 2011 alone, underutilized credit lines and accompanying matching grants for agriculture and MSEs was about US$320million. The amount disbursed was found to be only US$23million, representing 7.2%. This is in sharp contrast to assertions that inadequate access to credit has remained a central concern to farmers and indeed policymakers, and a key constraint to modernization and diversification of agriculture. These underutilized funds exclude the EDIF Fund, AGRA, AFD RSSP Guarantees and the Venture Capital Fund, which help leverage bank funding. [more]
AATF to Develop New Rice Varieties for Farmers in Ghana, Others
Spyghana.com
The African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), has signed a license agreement with Japan Tobacco (JT) of Japan for the use of JT’s transformation technology to develop new rice varieties by smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The initiative, known as the Nitrogen Use Efficient Water Use Efficient and Salt Tolerant (NEWEST) Rice Project, will seek to address some of the major constraints that face rice production in SSA. Countries selected for the project are Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda. [more]
Ghana’s Rice Production will Fall Due to Climate Change
Spyghana.com
Ghana is likely to experience a shortfall in rice production due to erratic rainfall and excessive heat. The nation’s policy makers must therefore take mitigation and adaptation measures to ensure that the agriculture sector is not ravaged by the effects of climate change. Climate change watchers at a Media forum in Koforidua on Friday, who made this known, indicated that climate change brought about drought, floods as well as depletion of aquifers, which guarantee underground water. Mr. Ronald Abrahams, of the Water Resources Commission (WRC), said while industrialized or developed countries used more water in their industrial production, poor countries including Ghana used more water for agricultural purposes. [more]
Bonatadu Trains 60 Farmers on Sustainable Agriculture
AllAfrica.com
Due to climate change with its attendant negative impact on agriculture, the Botataaba Nahira Taaba Development Union (BONATADU), a union of farmer networks operating in the Talensi-Nabdam District, in partnership with ActionAid Ghana, has trained 60 farmers on sustainable agriculture. Mr. Oliver Atibila, Program Officer, Food Rights, BONATADU, said the training was a refresher course after they had organized a series of such programs for the farmers, who also trained their colleague farmers on ideal farming practices. The refresher training was aimed at getting feedback in the form of experiences, benefits, and challenges from the farmers, and also coming out with the way forward. BONATADU started operation in 1999 with education, until it had a partnership with ActionAid Ghana, where it started a food security program with the farmers. Under the food security program, the local union started supporting farmers with seeds, tractor services, composting tools such as wheelbarrows, shovels, wellington boots, and as well as provided them with ruminants. [more]
Food Crisis/Security
Ghana Faces Increasing Food Security Challenges
Coastweek
Ghana faces increasing food security challenges despite an average annual staple crop production growth of 5.1 percent, David Sarfo Ameyaw, a director of Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), said here on Thursday. Agriculture forms a core part of Ghana’s economy, creating value of over six billion U.S. dollars (roughly 36 percent of GDP) and employing 4.6 million people, representing 56 percent of the workforce. About 3 million smallholder farmers with average farm sizes of between 0.5 and 2 hectares currently produce 95 percent of the country’s food crops. With current population growth at about 2.4 percent, an expected domestic demand will grow to more than 1 million tons for rice and more than 2 million tons for maize. To satisfy this growing domestic demand and ensure food security, Ghana needs to achieve a breakthrough in agricultural production, according to the AGRA director. Ghana’s food crop production remains below its needs because its agriculture is largely rain-fed, with traditional systems of farming still prevailing in most parts of the country. [more]
Cedi Depreciation Won’t Affect Food Security
Myjoyonline.com
The depreciation in the value of the cedi in current times does not pose a veritable threat to the country’s food security, the deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture responsible for Crops, Mr. Yaw Effah-Baafi, has said. He said there was no need to panic over food shortage, since timely interventions have been fashioned with supporting stake holder organizations and the country’s development partners to address any shortfall. Mr. Effa-Baafi gave the assurance at a press conference after the opening of the Ghana Agriculture Investment Forum held in Accra. “The situation is not as bad as it may seem,” he said, adding that a comparison with other African countries proved that Ghana's efforts in the agricultural sector were yielding good results. He explained that although the contribution of agriculture to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had declined from 51 per cent to 36 percent, staple food crops were still routinely cultivated in various parts of the country. [more]
Africa‘s Food Security and the G8 Summit
Workers World
The Hunger Project reports that out of a global population of 6.8 billion, 925 million people do not have sufficient food for members of their households. Moreover, 98 percent of undernourished people live in the so-called developing countries — those states that are colonies or former colonies. The Hunger Project also claims that more than 66 percent of all people who are hungry live in seven countries: Bangladesh, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. In Africa it is difficult to acquire accurate statistics on hunger. It is estimated that around 270 million people there are facing food deficits. The problem of periodic drought in the Horn of Africa, the subcontinent and the Sahel usually translates into acute food deficits and sometimes famine. [more]
Foreign Aid and Trade: A Balanced Approach to Promote Greater Food Security
Huffington Post
After each G8 summit, a communiqué is regularly issued to demonstrate that all member states are in full agreement over their priorities. In the realm of food security, the G8 had an ideal opportunity to provide a clear solution that embraces trade and opportunity, a new paradigm if you will, in international development and food security. Unfortunately, G8 leaders emerging from Camp David still spoke of the same old aid commitments without any backbone, all the while ignoring the impact that trade barriers and U.S. and European multi-billion dollar subsidies have on food production in those countries most in need of development. This G8 summit was, yet again, a missed opportunity for international leaders to make a real commitment to long-term food security and support for African and developing world farmers. [more]
Gender Issues
Eliminating Poverty Among Women
Ghana
Eliminating poverty is both an affordable and achievable goal. In 2000, 189 nations made a declaration with a promise to and multiple deprivations. This pledge became the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDG relates to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger and its specific target is to half the proportion of people living below $1 a day. This is considered necessary to enable the seven billion or more human beings in the world live in peace and harmony. This is in view of the recognition that the poor, especially women, face huge obstacles to access services and of making choices about their chances of making choices about their reproduction. The inter-relationship between population and poverty and the linkage with socio-economic development was first exposed by Thomas Malthus who said that high fertility and rapid population growth were likely to worsen poverty by increasing the price of food and reducing the price of labor. There is also evidence that a reduction in population due to declining fertility can have a positive effect on economic growth helps promote slower population growth while lower fertility in poorer areas can contribute significantly to poverty alleviation. [more]
Reports
Climate Change as a Wicked Problem : An Evaluation of the Institutional Context for Rural Water Management in Ghana
SAGE journals
Understanding complexity suggests that some problems are more complex than others and defy conventional solutions. These wicked problems will not be solved by the same tools and processes that are complicit in creating them. Neither will they be resolved by approaches short on explicating the complex interconnections of the multiple causes, consequences, and cross-scale actors of the problem. Climate change is one such wicked problem confronting water management in Ghana with a dilemma. The physical consequences of climate change on Ghana’s water resources are progressively worsening. At the same time, existing institutional arrangements demonstrate weak capacities to tackle climate change–related complexities in water management. Therefore, it warrants a dynamic approach imbued with complex and adaptive systems thinking, which also capitalizes on instrumental gains from prior existing institutions. Adaptive Co-Management offers such an opportunity for Ghana to adapt its water management system to climate change. [more]
Agricultural Biotechnology and Bio-Safety: Tools for Attaining Food Security and Sustainable Industrial Growth in Nigeria
© Wilolud Journals, 2012 Continental J. Agricultural Science 6 (1): 6 - 22, 2012
The current world population is about 6 billion and it is excepted to increase to more than 8 billion by the 2025 at an alarming rate of 80 million/year (95% of which will occur in the developing world). On average about 0.8 billion of the global population are food insecure, and about 400,000 die from hunger-related causes everyday. The situation is grim in Africa. With the highest growth of 3.1%, Africa’s population is over 550 million today and is projected to increase to1.3 billion in the next 25 years. Nigeria is not left out in this, with a population of over/150 million major of its population, about 75% live in rural areas fighting food insecurity, poverty and deprivations. The challenges today are how to prepare for the unprecedented levels of global population and ensure that our teeming population has access to food at all times and to produce food in a sustainable way. To meet this projected populations need for food, crop food production must be doubled, from 2-4 billion metric tons/year. This increase in production will primarily come from increasing biological yield and not only area expansion and irrigation because land and water are becoming scare due to population increase. The response to this is to harness all instruments of sustainable agricultural growth and agricultural biotechnology is one such instrument. Biotechnology has the potential to provide new opportunities for achieving enhanced crop and livestock productivity, and improve food security and nutrition. It provides tools for adapting and modifying the biological organisms, products processes and systems found in nature. It provides a wide range of tools for industry to improve cost and environmental performance. This paper thus reviewed areas biotechnology could support for industrial growth and ends with strategies for effective use of biotechnology in Nigeria. [more]
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