Farmers' platform to monitor debate on Plant Breeders Bill created

The pressure on Parliament to reject the Plant Breeders Bill (PBB) will continue unabated following the creation of a platform by civil society to resist the Bill in its current form.

The Platform, dubbed the Civil Society platform on the Plant Breeders Bill, seeks to keenly follow the debate and continuously engage Government with the view to dissuading it from passing the Bill.

The platform would further be used to promote food sovereignty in Ghana and to contribute to protecting the rights of small-scale farmers to be able to produce, select, exchange and sell their local seeds and prevent possible contamination of their seeds by Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) seeds from agribusinesses.

The platform was launched in Accra last Thursday by the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development (CIKOD) in collaboration with the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG).

The event was attended by farmer-based organisation, faith-based organisation, researchers, the media and other civil society organisations.

Accompanying the launch was the exhibition of local seeds and traditional foods.

Speaking to Public Agenda on the sidelines of the event, the Executive Director of CIKOD, Mr Bernard Guri, explained, “This platform is about creating an opportunity for small peasant farmers, consumers, civil society organisations and anybody that is concerned about food sovereignty in Ghana to be able to have a voice when it comes to taking decisions about food in Ghana”.

According to Mr Guri, the PBB, which is currently before Parliament, has a very wide impact on food production and future health of Ghanaians.

“Therefore this is a topic that every Ghanaian ought to have a voice and discuss. Unfortunately we don't have that platform so we thought the need to have this platform which is going to go even beyond debate on the Plant Breeders Bill so that they will monitor the land breeders bill the way it will be discussed in parliament and if at the end of the day parliament still decides to pass the bill the way is it would have modified it to take into account the interest of our ordinary people,” he added.

The Executive Director told Public Agenda that the platform would not only talk about the Bill, but would also look at workable alternatives that could improve Ghana's our food productivity.

The platform, he said, “Is going to be a platform not as an organisation not as an institution but it's a space that people can come together and address issues that we think are affecting farmers”.

In an interview, the Programmes Officer of the Peasant Farmers Association, Mr Charles Nyaaba, explicated to Public Agenda that the platform was created to provide alternatives.

Peasant farmers, Mr Nyaaba noted, have severally been accused by scientists and Parliamentarians of not having alternatives to GMOs despite their continuous criticism of that technology, hence the need for setting up of such a platform.

He explained: “This platform is actually to come out with alternatives. For instance, we are now trying to create seed banks, and those seed banks will be used to identify our indigenous foods that are getting lost in the system.”

Besides, the platform, he indicated, would come out with how to preserve seeds and alternative proposals in case Parliament goes ahead to pass the PBB.

It would look at the clauses within the Bill that could be injurious to agriculture in Ghana, scrutinise and develop advocacy around it.