Upper East Minister inaugurates new irrigation technology

Binduri (U/E) Feb. 21, GNA - The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr. Boniface Gambila, on Wednesday launched a new irrigation technology system known as the African Market Garden System (AMG) at Binduri. The technology, which is being run as a pilot project, has about 20 farming groups on three acres of land doing onion farming and using the drip system of irrigation. Similar projects are being carried out in Tamale and Navrongo.

The Minister said it was one of the best ways of managing and conserving water, especially during dry seasons, as compared to the furrow irrigation where percolation and run-off water is excessive. The drip irrigation system is believed to cut down water use by 60 per cent as compared to the furrow system and could therefore help prolong farming activities in the dry season periods. He said the project would help create jobs for the youth and other inhabitants of the area, thereby curbing the youth from migrating to the south in search of non-existent jobs.

Mr. Gambila expressed the need to replicate the project throughout the region to help reduce the poverty levels and pledged the support of the Regional Coordinating Council to the sustenance of the project.

Explaining the concept of the technology later in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Professor Dov Pasternak, Principal Scientist and Director of International Programmes for Arid Land Crops (IPALAC), said the AMG system was an invention of IPALAC.

"It is a small-scale horticultural production package based on low-pressure drip irrigation," he said.

Professor Pasternak said drip irrigation was one of the best ways of managing and conserving water for farm irrigation activities as it provided quality yields and also saved labour.

The Director of SARI in charge of the three northern regions, Dr. Abdulai Baba Salifu, said the project was initiated and executed by SARI and the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

"It has improved the economic and social lives of farmers in Golinga in the Northern Region tremendously, and we hope the people of Binduri would also benefit more from the project," he said.