Sefwi farmers learn modern farming methods

A FOUR-DAY Agroforestry Technologies Training Workshop to teach farmers that food production can successfully take place through the employment of environmentally sound and less expensive agricultural production methods has taken place at Sefwi Wiawso.

The workshop, was organised within the framework of the three-year Forest Resources Project (FRCP). It was funded by the European Commission (EC) and implemented by Ricerca e Coperazione, an Italian NGO in collaboration with the Institute of Renewable Natural Resources (IRNR) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), the Sefwi Wiawso District Assembly and the project beneficiaries.

The workshop discussed with more than 100 farmers the requisite knowledge and information on the various agroforestry practices as solutions to specific land-use problems. It also taught them the awareness of the potentials of agroforestry in sustaining small farm productivity, and awakening the innovative capabilities of the farmers in adapting agroforestry technologies to suit their conditions and needs.

Other topics discussed included agroforestry concepts, women and agroforestry, establishment and management of trees under agroforestry, legal and institutional frame for forest resources creation, and introduction to beekeeping, mushroom and snail farming.

In a welcoming speech read on his behalf, the Co-ordinator of the project, Mr Evans Dawoe disclosed that the workshop was the fifth in the series of nine workshops scheduled to train 600 farmers in the district, in various agroforestry farming methods.

He noted that with the growth rate of about 3.1 per cent, food production needs to keep pace with population growth, if the nation is to be able to feed the increasing numbers of people, especially against the background that farmlands are getting scarce, farm sizes reducing and forest cover disappearing very fast.

He has therefore, stressed the need for the farmers to adopt practices that will reverse the situation. Well designed and implemented Agroforestry practices, he noted, will be the only sustainable solutions in the long term. He advised the farmers to use the opportunity to exchange ideas and to put into practice, whatever new knowledge they have acquired.

Resource persons for the workshop were drawn from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and Ricerca e Co-operazione.