Prof.Moses Bradford Mochiah, Director of CSIR-CRI , addressing the farmers
As part of measures to safeguard Lake Bosomtwe from the negative environmental impacts, eighty farmers in the Ashanti Region have been schooled on Climate Change Resilience and Mitigation technologies.
Twenty people have also been trained as Trainers in Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA), Conservation Agriculture (CA), Agroecology (AE), Agroforestry (AF), and carbon storage practices to train the eighty farmers on techniques.
Farmers in the Lake Bosomtwe area are building the Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation (CCAM) capacities of their farms by making their own evidence-based farm decisions and implementing ecological CCAM practices.
Furthermore, the project aims to support farmers in the Lake Bosomtwe area to become self-reliant in securing Climate Change Resilience and Mitigation.
The farmers were drawn from four communities in Bosomtwe and Bosome Freho. These eight communities are Adwafo, Abaase, Detieso, Esaase, Duase, Amakom, Adjaman and Atafram.
The District Chief Executive of Bosomtwe , Mr. Joseph Kwesi Asuming ,speaking at the event.
The eighty farmers underwent training for twenty months in a project which is dubbed “Securing Climate Change Resilience and Mitigation by building Self-reliant Smallholder Farmers within the Lake Bosomtwe Landscape.”
The farmers were taken through CCAM technologies such as plantain intervention, Rapid macro-propagation of plantain, Biochar intervention, Neem and other plant-based bio-pesticide and fertiliser formulation, Composting, Agroforestry intervention, Maize Cropping intervention, Leguminous intervention, Cocoyam Multiplication Technique, Cassava Farm Management and Production , Adaptive Yam Minisett Technique (AYMT) and Ware Yam Demonstration .
The project was funded by European Union (EU) through Expertise France and Global Climate Change Alliance (GCCA), and partnered by A Rocha Ghana and Council for Scientific Institute Research-Crop Research Institute (CSIR-CRI).
Speaking at the Global Climate Change Alliance Plus (GCCA+) National Learning Workshop, which was held at Kuntenase, which marked the closure of the programme, Prof Moses Brandford Mochiah, Director at the CSIR-CRI), disclosed that the farmers were taught a number of lessons, including how to turn around the soil to get nutrients, a technology he indicated used to be practiced by Ghanaian farmers.
According to him, the climate had changed so much so that lately the first season which used to record significant rains does not do so, but the second season was now experiencing rainfall, adding that the temperature had gone up, prompting farmers that the climate had changed.
In view of the above, Prof Mochiah noted that since the climate had changed, farmers would also have to change their style of farming.
This development, he noted, led the CSIR-CRI to share research with farmers to appreciate why they had to change their practices to produce more food. He hailed the farmers for their cooperation for the project.
On her part, Mrs. Abena Dufie Wiredu Bremang, Principal Officer and Head of Pra Basin of the Water Resource Commission (WRC), noted that one of the elements affecting climate change was water.
This prevailing condition, according to Mrs. Wiredu Bremang, signalled Climate Change was the cause of the erratic rainfall pattern, hence, the need to take good care of water bodies, which helped in the formation of rains.
She disclosed that all tributaries to Lake Bosomtwe had dried up, “so if it does not rain, there will not any water in the Lake, and as the sun keeps shining, the Lake will evaporate.” She, therefore, urged all the farmers to be good ambassadors to sustain the Lake.
On the buffer zone reservation for Lake Bosomtwe, Mrs. Wiredu Bremang noted that it had been earmarked for protecting.
Touching on the goal of the project, she told the farmers that the project came into being because of Lake Bosomtwe, and subsequently urged the farmers to heed the lessons they had learnt from the project.
Mrs. Mary Otiwaa Asante, a Scientist at the CSIR-CRI, in a post-interview, stated that Ghana was experiencing climate change, and they had to build self-resilient farmers to enable them adapt to situations and occurrences in the environment.
According to her, without food security, there would be chaos in the homes and community, so the aim of the training was to give the farmers improved climate smart technologies.
She noted they targeted eighty trainers of training farmers and set up eight demonstration fields in eight communities, so the contact was with eighty farmers, and they were to replicate what they had been taught to the entire community.
Quizzed about the potency of plant-based chemicals on crops, Mrs. Asante explained that the plant-based agro chemicals were all chemicals, but some were synthetic and when the synthetic was sprayed they caused soil acidity, because it killed soil microorganism, which were beneficial through replenishing the soil organic matter, which the plants needed, so the continued use of synthetic agro chemicals or synthetic chemicals would also affect the soil.
When it also runs into the lake which people drink and fish from, it would also have a negative impact on the lake.
Mrs. Asante stated: “Those are the ways where we thought them to control the pest in order not to have the ripple negative effect.”
The Ashanti Regional Meteorological Director, Mr. Sampson Adu Tieku, told the farmers that the climate was changing, and that the months of June and July, which were known as rainy season, were changing to the months of August, September and October, and, therefore, urged the farmers to be climate smart about where and how to plant.
On seasonal forecast, Adu Tieko advised the farmers to acquire knowledge on how the rain sets in, adding that if farmers wanted to plant crops, then they had to start earlier.
He, therefore, urged them to plant crops which had short harvesting periods.
Mr. Prosper Kwame Antwi, a representative from A Rocha Ghana, stated that the GCCA took off twenty months ago, where farmers were selected from communities.
According to Kwame Antwi, the farmers had been taught a lot to help them go about their activities in the midst of climate change and other environmental issues.
He appealed to the farmers to share the knowledge they had acquired with their colleagues.
The District Chief Executive (DCE) for Bosomtwe, Mr. Joseph Kwesi Asuming, lauded the organisers and facilitators of the programme, and urged the farmers to take whatever they had learned seriously, since knowledge was power.
Mr. Asuming told the farmers that a buffer zone had been reserved for the protection of the lake, hence, they should adhere to the directive.
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