Below are some current developments on Agriculture in Africa:
Agricultural Issues
Vitamin A Cassava Becoming Popular
The biofortified cassava, rich in vitamin A, is becoming widespread in Africa, driven by increasing awareness of its health and nutrition benefits. The variety is changing the description of cassava – a root crop often referred to as “Africa’s best kept secret.” According to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), cassava, consumed by over 300 million people in Africa, has been marginalized in many debates because of myths and half-truths about its nutritional value and role in farming systems. However, the greatest burden of the crop, the research institution says, is the stigma of being considered an inferior, low-protein food that is uncompetitive with glamorous crops, such as imported rice and wheat. “But the perception about cassava is changing…with vitamin A..
Cassava Cultivation in the Ada West District; A Viable Investment Opportunity
The Ada West District is fairly new, with a population of 59,124 as per the 2010 Population and Housing Census. Though the district is presently not a beneficiary of any class advantage in the area of commerce or industry, it has rich agricultural potentials in its wide stretch of fertile arable land that is ideal for the cultivation of various crops. The economy of the district is predominantly agrarian, with approximately 42.5 per cent of the population engaged in agriculture, forestry and fishing. The sector provides employment for about 42.5 percent of the people. Agriculture constitutes the main economic activity and a major source of livelihood for majority of people in the district through direct farming, distribution and marketing of farm produce and other services to the agricultural sector.
Cocoa Producing Communities Benefit from GH₵2million Investment
Federated Commodity (FEDCO), a cocoa buying company and its partners have set aside an amount of GH¢2,442,000.00 to support cocoa famers in six cocoa growing areas in the Western Region. The areas to be supported include Wassa Akropong, Manso Amenfi, Asankragwa, Samreboi A&B and Akontonbra. A statement copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, on Thursday, said a total of GH¢1,042,000.00 was used to purchase and supply farm inputs and logistics to the farmers and the other half also went into the provision of potable water for the communities. The statement quoted Alhaji Abdul Razak Adamu, Managing Director, FEDCO, as saying the presentation formed part of the Walter Matter SA and FEDCO Sustainability Project, aimed at helping to develop cocoa producing communities which trade with the company.
Fourth Annual Northern Ghana Pre-harvest Agribusiness Forum Held
The Ghana Grains Council (GGC) has hosted about 700 maize, rice and soybean value chain farmers and actors at a forum, enabling them to interact and establish market linkages to enhance overall efficiency in their industries. The event, which took place in Tamale on Thursday, formed part of the Fourth Annual Northern Ghana Pre-harvest Agribusiness Forum, which brought together farmers, buyers, processors, transporters, input dealers and financial institutions. The objective was to enable the actors to learn and share ideas on the season’s production outlook, identify critical actions to build competitive businesses, and establish firm marketing relationships for the forthcoming maize, rice and soybean harvest.
Battling the ‘Monsanto law’ in Ghana
This week, farmers in Ghana are on the frontlines of a battle. The national parliament is due to return from its summer break and first thing on the agenda is the government’s Plant Breeders Bill. The proposed legislation contains rules that would restrict farmers from an age-old practice: freely saving, swapping and breeding seeds they rely on. Under the laws, farmers that use seed varieties claimed under new intellectual property rights by individuals and companies anywhere in the world risk hefty fines or even imprisonment. According to the Ghanaian government and its corporate backers, the new laws would incentivize the development of new seed varieties and ensure crops are safe and saleable. Yet in recent months, farmers, campaigners, trade unions and faith groups have taken to the streets in the cities of Accra, Tamale and beyond.
Forestry Decries Rate of Deforestation
Mr. James Ware, Upper East Regional Director of Forestry Commission, has decried the alarming rate of deforestation in the Region and called on communities close to forest reserves not to misuse the vegetative cover as that would adversely affect the environment. Mr. Ware said trees were for life and therefore continuous falling of them resulted in food insecurity, environmental degradation and facilitated climate change. He noted the efforts most environmental and civil society organizations put into growing trees, and said some of the planted trees ended up poorly because of acts such as burning, poor rain fall and destruction by animals. The Regional Director, who was speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Bolgatanga, expressed worry at the increasing spate of galamsey activities, which he said contributed to destruction of trees in reserve areas and, in some cases, land reserved for infrastructural purposes.
Rural Women are Pillars of Family Farming – FAO Representative
Rural women are the backbone of family farming as they account for about half of the agricultural labour force in developing countries. In spite of that, a large contribution of women’s works in family farms is not recognized in terms of income earned and access to productive resources and assets. Dr Lamourdia Thiombiano, Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) representative to Ghana, said in a speech read for him at a national celebration of 2014 World Rural Women’s Day at Akrofrom in the Techiman North District of Brong-Ahafo Region. The programme, organized by Farmers Organization Network of Ghana (FONG) with sponsorship by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), FAO, ECASARD, a Farmer-based Organization (FBO), SEND-Ghana, and Africa Lead…
SEND Ghana Holds Regional Policy Dialogue On Women And Smallholder Agriculture In Ghana
Male farmers continue to benefit more from government-initiated agricultural programmes, a report by SEND Ghana, Action-Aid Ghana and the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana has revealed. According to the report, the relative growth in the sector, with its benefits, has not been equitably distributed between men and women farmers, and programmes like the Youth in Agriculture Programme, Northern Rural Growth Programme, Fertilizer Subsidy Programme and the Agricultural Mechanization Service Centre. It is against this background that SEND-Ghana held its Greater Accra Regional Policy Dialogue on Agriculture to address the challenges facing women farmers in the country…an institution like the Women in Agriculture Development Directorate (WAID) of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), existed to address specific gender issues in agriculture.
DuPont Pioneer, USAID Collaborate to Boost Ghana’s Food Production
DuPont, an international organization that deals with issues related to agricultural development, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) launched a collaborative programme in Tamale on Wednesday, that will boost maize production among smallholder farmers and help to increase their incomes. The initiative, which involves an investment of more than US$4 million over the next four years, started in July 2014. Known as the Ghana Advanced Maize Seed Adoption Program (GAMSAP), the programme is modelled on a similar one undertaken in Ethiopia by ACDI/VOCA, the implementing organization in Ghana….“DuPont is collaborating with USAID to improve household incomes of smallholder maize farmers by improving their access to credit, to hybrid…
Official Says Lack of Subsidized Fertilizer is Affecting Agriculture
Lack of subsidy on fertilizer is affecting agriculture production, especially rice farming in the Birim Central Municipality. Mr. Anthony Kodjo Prah, the Birim Central Municipal Director of Agriculture, said this to the Ghana News Agncy(GNA) Media Auditing and Tracking of Development Projects team at Akyem Oda. He said valley bottom rice farmers depended mostly on fertilizer to increase production but lack of subsidy on fertilizer was hampering the ability of the farmers to buy the required bags of fertilizer for their farms….fertility of most of the farm lands used for rice production had gone down in some cases by about 50 percent due to continuous cropping of the land as farmers these days do not practice shifting cultivation. “That is why we are advocating for zero tillage where farmers will not have to burn the bushes on the land so that they can sustain its fertility in the absence of fertilizer,” Mr Prah said.
New Technology Gives Farmers Multiple Yields
Substantial grain yields have been recorded by small holder farmers who have adopted the Zai Technology Farming in the Upper East Region. About 100 farmers from Kazugu, Kayilo and Kuliya communities in the Kassena Nankana West District, and Yiduri and Wuug in the Talensi District, told the GNA during a tour that with the new technology they got more than three times the usual harvest this year and noted that the old method of farming was not helping them. Under the Zai farming concept, farmers are empowered with the necessary skills and capacity to dig planting pits in crusted soils, which used to produce high runoff water. The Zai pits have a diameter of 15 to 30 cm and a depth of 10 to 15 cm to collect rainfall and…
Indian Wins 2014 World Food Prize
Dr. Rajaram, an Indian who has resided in Mexico for a greater part of his life, bred an impressive 480 varieties of wheat to provide nutritious grains resistant to rust disease and adaptable in a vast array of climates, which have helped protect the global food supply and fed more people. At a colourful ceremony held in the Iowa legislature, the wheat breeder, who has spent his life developing the varieties of the staple crop, was awarded the prize in front of an international audience comprising crop and soil scientists, farmers, selected agricultural journalists across the world among many others at the Iowa State Capital in Des Moin "This award honours the resilience and innovative spirit of farmers in the developing world and the national agricultural systems…
Amanano Rural Bank Increases Support to Agric in Catchment Area
Amanano Rural Bank is to support the agricultural sector in the Ashanti Region with GH¢5 million in the next fiscal year as against the previous year’s investment of GH¢3.3m. The amount represents a 33 percentage increase. The amount will go into such areas as citrus, cocoa, palm plantation, poultry and piggery, to help areas to benefit from the support include small-scale farmers, merchants, industrialists and co-operatives of such farmers as well as enterprises in the bank’s catchment area. Areas to benefit from the support include small-scale farmers, merchants, industrialists and co-operatives of such farmers as well as enterprises in the bank’s catchment area. The GM said there was the need to support the development of local industries in the country to ensure that the local economy was strengthened.
Any Salvation for Ghana’s Receding Forest Cover?
Along a sizeable portion of Ghana’s savanna, a secondary afforestation project has begun on the precincts of Wa in the Upper West Region. The green aerial view of the still-sprouting skinny plants can hardly compare to the endowments of the vast greens that have turned the Eastern Region into a virtual freezing zone. Neither has it reached the levels that make Axim Ghana’s biggest rainfall territory… Statistics from Ghana’s inventory of forestry stock indicates that the state has lost 98 percent of its forest cover as of 1994. The remaining two per ent has been at the mercy of marauding logging/lumber firms and chainsaw operators who have turned Ghana’s forests into lumber ‘galamsey’ pits.
Rural Women Farmers have Consistently been Overlooked
Women farmers based in the countryside in the country have appealed to the government to institute an agricultural fund to serve their needs financially to increase agricultural production in Ghana. “Rural women farmers have consistently been overlooked as far as policies to help their needs are concerned, more importantly, it has become so difficult to access agricultural credits to help in farm production,’’ says Mrs. Lydia Sasu, the Executive Director of Development Action Association. Given that over 70% of Ghana’s agricultural production is done by smallholder farmers, mostly women in the rural areas, there is the need for the government to put in place measures that address the needs of rural women farmers…
INTERVIEW - Ghana's Success in Fight against Hunger has Lessons for Others
As India starts its version of Brazil's famous zero hunger campaign, the world's most populous democracy could take some inspiration from Ghana. The West African country "has met zero hunger", Jose Graziano da Silva, head of the Food and Agriculture Organization said on Thursday. Former Ghanaian president John Kufuor can take at least some of the credit for this. It started with a simple move to change the tax code when Kufuor’s government first took office in 2001. Taxes on cocoa, a key export crop, stood at 60 percent of the market price, so growers could keep only 40 percent of the value of their production. "We reversed this, giving the farmers 60 percent of the profits," Kufuor said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "The state had been over-taxing the farmer."
Food Security/Crisis
Ghana Faces Food Insecurity Challenge
A Manager of Africa Lead, Mrs. Cecilia Addae has expressed the need for the country to ensure food security through storage, preservation and processing to eliminate hunger. She noted that Ghana is faced with the challenge of food insecurity, and this requires government’s effort as well as contribution of stakeholders such as business concerns in the food industry. Mrs. Addae, Component Manager responsible for non-state actors made the call in presentation on the topic: “Re-building the African Pot” at a national celebration of 2014 World Rural Women’s Day at Akrofrom in the Techiman North District of Brong-Ahafo Region. The programme, organized by Farmers Organization Network of Ghana with sponsorship by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), FAO,….
Local Resident Fostering Agriculture, Food Security in West Africa
Anna native Dustin Homan, 26,was recently deployed to Ghana for an 11-month assignment to teach agriculture with AgriCorps. Homan, class of 2007 at Anna High School, is one of seven individuals selected to the first cohort of AgriCorps members. AgriCorps, a nonprofit organization, sends American agriculture volunteers to developing countries to share information about agricultural technologies, and to help communities work towards food security. According to AgriCorps founder Trent McKnight, “Food security is more complex than increasing food production; the economic, environmental, and social issues surrounding food production must also be tackled to create a food secure world.”
Reports/Articles
Pesticide use in Legume production in the Tamale Metropolis of the Northern Region, Ghana
KEN Sowley, E Aforo - Ghana Journal of Science, Technology and …, 2014
This study was conducted in six communities namely Jangyil, Fosegu, Gawagu, Dundo, Kukuo and Dalogyil within the Tamale Metropolis of Northern Region. The study aimed at identifying the types of pesticides used for legume crop production and methods of handling them. Sixty (60) respondents were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaire. Majority (76%) of the respondents were males most of whom were youth (15-35). The percentage of respondents who lacked formal education was high (52%) among the respondents with the highest level of education being Senior High School. Cereals were the most commonly cultivated crops (40%) folowed by legumes (30%). Among the leguminous crops cultivated, cowpea was the most common (38%) followed by groundnut (32%), soybean (13%), pigeon pea (5%), bambara groundnut (5%) and others (8%). Almost all respondents (91%) used pesticides. Thirteen out of the pesticides identified were herbicides with Atrazine being the….
Statistical Analysis of Rainfall Trend for Volta Region in Ghana
M Nyatuame, V Owusu-Gyimah, F Ampiaw - International Journal of Atmospheric …, 2014
Climate change is global in nature, but potential changes are not expected to be globally uniform; rather, there may be dramatic regional differences. Considerable effort should be invested to understand climate change at the regional level. The study was conducted to establish the rainfall trends in Volta Region and also to provide the evidence of climate change by analyzing available rainfall record for 30-year period of 1981 to 2011. Records of monthly and yearly rainfall were obtained from the headquarters of Ghana Meteorological Department, Accra, for analysis. The region was grouped into three zones characteristic of the whole country, namely, coastal zone, middle zone, and northern zone, respectively. Graphs were constructed to illustrate the changing trends within the months and years of the zones. Statistical analysis (i.e., LSD, ANOVA) was performed to assess any significant difference among the three zones and within the months and years under study….
Reducing Poverty through Community Participation: The Case of the National Poverty Reduction Program in the Dangme-West District of Ghana
Community participation has been mostly applied in mainstream development approaches to reduce poverty. However, there is little understanding about the nature of the association between community participation and empowerment in development projects leading to poverty reduction. This paper examines the instrumental use of community participation in the National Poverty Reduction Program in the Dangme-West district, Ghana to promote participation and reduce poverty. A total of 210 respondents, including project beneficiaries and staff of the facilitating NGO, ProNet, constituted the sample for the study. This paper demonstrates that community participation is more effective and has the potential to result in empowerment when the primacy is on training and building the capacity of beneficiaries. Providing skills through training to beneficiaries enhanced their participation as well as their interest and involvement in group activities.
Food Security in Ethiopia: The Case of the Productive Safety Net Programme
P Maier - 2014
The last half of a century has brought about significant improvements in aggregate food security, thanks to the increase in per capita availability of food and decreasing real food prices (Barrett 2002; FAO, IFAD and WFP 2013). Furthermore, the diversity of food has increased markedly, reflected by an increased share of fruits, vegetables and animal-source products available (by 90, 70, and 32 per cent respectively, since 1990), in comparison to a decreasing share of cereals, roots and tubers (FAO, IFAD and WFP 2013). Nonetheless, many people particularly in developing countries have not been able to benefit from these improvements. In 2013, there are an estimated 842 million people (12 per cent of the world population) who are unable to meet their dietary energy requirements necessary to live an active and healthy life, or to put it another way, around one in eight people on our planet are likely to have suffered from chronic food insecurity1 (FAO, IFAD and WFP 2013).
Insects Used for Animal Feed in West Africa
M Kenis, N Koné, C Chrysostome, E Devic, GKD Koko… - Entomologia, 2014
In West Africa, as in many parts of the world, livestock and fish farming suffer from the increasing cost of feed especially ingredients which are hardly available for village poultry farming and small fish farming. Insects, which are a natural food source of poultry and fish and are rich in protein and other valuable nutrients, can be used to improve animal diets, a practice which is now strongly promoted by the FAO as a tool for poverty alleviation. This paper reviews practices and research on the use of insects as animal feed in West Africa and the perspectives to further develop the techniques, in particular for smallholder farmers and fish farmers. The most promising insects are flies, especially the house fly (Musca domestica) (Diptera Muscidae) and the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) (Diptera Stratiomyiidae), which can be mass reared on-farm for domestic use, in small production units at the community or industrial level…
Varied Nutritional Impact of the Global Food Price Crisis
A De Matteis - Economics and Business Letters, 2014
Two crises among the worst experienced since the start of the modern era have marked the global scene during recent years. The first crisis was characterized by a sudden and dramatic rise in food prices and developed into the second one which was mainly of a financial nature. Food price rises typically erode the purchasing power of those at the lower end of the income scale in particular, working therefore as a driver of economic and social inequalities. This paper assesses the implications of the surge in international food price in terms of food availability and access to food in low- and middle-income countries. The estimation of long-term elasticties has revealed a varied perspective, characterized in some cases by a worsening food deficit even in conditions of improved food availability.
Evaluation of Staff Performance in Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria Ibadan (Crin)
A Adeola - International Journal of Research, 2014
This study focused on the procedure of staff evaluation and performance in the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria (CRIN) with a view to assess the evaluation performance system of staff in CRIN. It also appraised the current evaluation process procedure in CRIN, and analyzed problems &challenges associated with the performance evaluation system in the Institute. The effectiveness of evaluation instrument employed by the Institute for the performance assessment of staff negates the evaluation method on staff related habits. Both primary and secondary sources of data were employed for the study. Primary sources of data were utilized through in-depth interviews. The study population comprised the staff of Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria (CRIN) that was in four main departments. It was revealed that the information generated from the performance appraisal exercise is used only for promotion of staff and not for other developmental needs of the Public Servants such as trainings and…