SADA plants 4,200,000 trees in Savannah zones

The Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), in partnership with the Asongtaba Cottage and Industries, has cultivated 4,200,000 seedlings of tick, mahogany, cassia and shea in the five regions of the SADA ecological zone aimed at greening those areas and reducing climate change effects.

To achieve the project objective, many boreholes, dug outs and mechanized sources of water had been constructed while over thousand workers had been employed to take good care of the trees on sustainable basis to obtain the economic benefits and development of the country.

Mr Polycarp Kazaresam, Project Manager of SADA Afforestation, disclosed this on Monday during a familiarization tour of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Employment and Social Welfare and State Enterprises to some projects site of SADA to acquaint itself of the activities of the authority.

The committee was led by its Chairman, Mr Prince Jacob Hayibor.

Mr Kazaresam said it would plant five million trees by the end of the year while the people, who had been employed, would continue to take care of the trees.

Alhaji Gilbert Seidu Iddi, Chief Executive Officer of SADA, said the authority was determined to green the catchment areas of the SADA to reduce the devastating effects of climate change which had created difficulties for the livelihoods of the people in those areas.

He said SADA would grow over five million trees of various kinds to reduce the climate change effect and increase the crop yields of farmers in those areas stressing that such an intervention would also reduce floods.

Beside the afforestation project SADA was implementing through Asongtaba Cottage, five other projects were being implemented including inputs support programme which would leverage farmers’ needs and act as an addition to MoFA programmes.

Alhaji Iddi said SADA had also intervened in the guinea fowl rearing project to increase its consumption in the local Ghanaian markets while targeting exporting excesses.

He said SADA would soon step into housing schemes to provide cheaper and low cost housing for low income earners.

Dr Ayesha Hakeem, Managing Director of the African Connections, a partner organization of SADA, said her outfit had supported several farmers in the Atebubu-Amantin, Sene and Pru districts to cultivate "pana 53," a new high yielding variety of maize and had increased their yield from 1.7 metric tons of maize per hectare to 4.9 metric tons per hectare.

She said farmers harvested 20 bags per acre with the new variety as against six bags of acre with the old varieties and commended SADA for introducing the variety to farmers stressing that farmers living conditions would greatly be enhanced in the coming years.

Nana Agyeman, National Best Maize Farmer, who cultivated the new pana 53 this year, said the variety had enabled him to win the award and increase his economic status and urged his colleague farmers to patronize it to increase their income.