Agriculture extension agents trained on soil fertility management

Tamale, Aug 12, GNA - Sixty Agriculture Extension Agents drawn from 31 districts in the Northern, Upper East and West regions are undergoing a three-day training workshop on soil fertility management in Tamale, aimed at improving the quality of soil and thereby boosting food crop production.

The workshop which was on the theme: "Boosting maize-based cropping system productivity in Northern Ghana" and organised by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in collaboration with the Savannah Agriculture Research Institute (SARI) is being funded through the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) under its Soil Health Project (SHP).

The SHP aims at fostering collaboration and partnership with key stakeholders and maximizing the synergy of the AEAs to work in selected communities using relevant integrated soil fertility management technologies and enhancing dominant livelihood systems.

Dr. Mathias Fosu, Project Coordinator of the SHP, said the project would cover 225 villages in the three northern regions and benefits over 120,000 farmers.

He said the Project had a three-year duration and aimed at training the participants on how to manage soil fertility, choose the right type of fertilizers and the right quantities in which they should be applied and impart that knowledge to farmers to enable them practice best farming practices that would improve production.

Dr. Fosu discounted the claims of some NGOs that the use of fertilizer was harmful to the soil and said for increase productivity in agriculture there was the need to increase the level of application of fertilizer on farms, adding that organic fertilizer alone cannot achieve this.

He said the SHP Project had identified maize, groundnuts, soyabean and cowpea for large scale production and was also working with seed companies and linking them with farmer groups to introduce them to new varieties and high yielding seeds.

Dr. Stephen Nutsugah, Director of CSIR-SARI, said the AGRA soil project had four main objectives.

These are increasing maize-legume production through up-scaling of proven integrated soil fertility management technologies, strengthening farmer organisations, agro-input dealers and extension system for wide scale dissemination of integrated soil fertility management technologies.

Others are to monitor and assess impacts of integrated soil fertility management technologies on productivity of small-scale agriculture and livelihoods of rural people and update and refine fertilizer recommendations for maize and grain-legumes in Northern Ghana.