2,500 Farmers benefit from SARI

More than 2,500 farmers in the Northern and Upper West Regions benefited from the activities of the Savannah Agricultural Research Institute (SARI) between 2013 and 2014.

Dr Stephen Kwasi Nutsugah, Director of SARI announced this at Nyankpala at the opening of a four-day completion workshop of ENRACCA-WA project under the auspices of the West and Central Africa Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF/WECARD) and hosted by Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)-SARI.

The programme brought together participants from Ghana, Senegal and Burkina-Faso.

Dr Nutsugah said CSIR-SARI had been a beneficiary of four major CORAF/WECARD projects in the Northern Region since 2011 including the research programme on Climate Change, Agriculture for food security for ENRACCA-WA project, which helped in the improvement of lives.

ENRACCA-WA is an acronym for Enhancing the Resilience and Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change of farmers in semi-arid West Africa, which is focused on two main components being up scaling of proven best-bet and specific climate-resilient Sustainable land, Water and Nutrient Management practices and technologies.

The other component is targeted at capacity strengthening of farmers, community-based organisations and other relevant stakeholders to better understand and integrate climate change and variability into agricultural management practices.

Dr Nutsugah said transformation of livelihoods and poverty reduction in the Northern Region could be achieved by concerted efforts by all to reverse the resultant low agriculture productivity, which had been the main cause of poverty and food insecurity in northern Ghana.

He said it was because of improving agriculture that CSIR-SARI worked assiduously in developing some technologies and mentioned that trainings for Agricultural Extension Agents (AEAs) on causes, impacts, risks, opportunities and response domains of climate change were undertaken.

He said more than 600 farmers were also educated while 300 others were trained on the nature and benefits of sustainable land, water and nutrient management options to efficiency of climate change alternatives for responding to climate variability and change.

He said 1,400 farmers were also exposed to demonstration plots for integrated soil fertility management options on normal and drought-tolerant maize cultivars in Tolon in the Northern Region and in Sissala West in the Upper West Region through direct participation and field days.

He said 120 community farmers had also been trained to read rain gauges, record rainfall data and also to interpret weather forecasts sent in the form of text messages to aid well informed farming and related decision making in Upper West and Northern Regions.