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Mr. Bernard Guri, Executive Director of the Center for Indigenous and Organizational Development (CIKOD), has reiterated the need for the government to allow farmers to work closely with scientists to develop regulations that guide the seed system in Ghana. .
He said that although Parliament had passed the Plant Variety Protection Bill, the government could insist on giving local farmers the opportunity to work with a scientist on locally produced seed.
He said the Green Revolution kind of agricultural approach that promoted only chemical fertilizers, the use of pesticides and big machinery for big farmers did the environment no good.
Mr. Guri made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, after a regional farmers’ campaign forum in the Northern Ecological Zone, held in Bolgatanga, Upper East Region.
The forum, organized to raise public awareness on agroecology, was supported by and attended by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWAS) and the 11th Hour Project and Joint Action for Farmer Organizations in West Africa (JAFOWA). the Ghana Peasant Farmers Association (PFAG), the Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Organizations (CIKOD) and the National Association of Sesame Farmers and Businesses of Ghana.
The campaign was to raise the voices of farmers on the need to include agroecology in Ghana’s agricultural system.
Mr. Guri said that agroecology had a better positive impact on the environment than the current type of green revolution agriculture practiced.
Mr Guri, responding to how far the farmer association agenda had come, noted that there had been increased recognition that led to an increase in the share of organic fertilizers delivered to farmers through official channels.
He said that although the government gave approval for seed production, the timing did not favor farmers, hence their inability to meet demands, but still hoped that stakeholders would be able to produce viable local seeds.
In a statement addressed to the President of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo, farmers called on the government to increase investments in agroecology to address the impact of climate change on small farmers in northern Ghana.
“Current agricultural practices coupled with mining activities and population growth have contributed to the destruction of our forest landscape, Northern Ghana is almost like a desert with all tree cover and vegetation gone, the pattern of rain is erratic, high temperatures and the emergence of pests and diseases ”.
Therefore, the farmers called for “a larger budget allocation for the continuation of the stalled projects of a village and a dam, subsidy for simple mechanization services and water-pumping machines for young people to cultivate and raise in the dry season.” .
“It is necessary to reorient public spending priorities to focus more on important agricultural development, such as rural infrastructure and agroecology agricultural skills training with an emphasis on technologies that focus on recognizing, preserving and using traditional and indigenous knowledge”, they said.
