Appropriate farming technologies by research Scientist has led to the return of many youth who migrated to countries such as Libya, Niger, and Nigeria to the Bawku Traditional area and has also improved the lives of the chief and people of the Gentiga a farming community along the Cobori River, one the major tributary of the White Volta in the Bawku Municipality of the Upper East Region.
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research of the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (CSIR-SARI), in collaboration with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture MOFA, led by a Senior Research Scientist in charge of the Manga Station, Dr. Francis Kusi, paid separate field visits to the CSIR-SARI project implementation areas in Gentiga No.1 and 2 in the Bawku Municipal.
Conducting the team to some of the farms at the Gentiga community, some of the returned migrants were busy farming vegetables such as peppers, onions, soya beans and maize.
The Chief of Gentiga, Nab Bukari Issah, expressed gratitude to the Management of CSIR-SARI for the intervention saying as a chief, he has seen the numerous benefits of the interventions and that explained why he has ensured that all the community members, especially the youth and women groups go into farming particularly dry season farming in the area.
The Chief indicated that, apart from CSIR-SARI farming technologies attracting more of the migrants back home, majority of the community members who adopted the technologies has been able to put up houses, purchase cars, pay for their children school fees and the premium of the National Health Insurance Scheme.
He indicated that, through the knowledge acquired from CSIR-SARI farming technologies, he has been able to farm about 46 acres of maize, three acres of pepper, and two acres of onion and harvested about 186 maxi bags from the maize farm in the last crop season.
Dr. Kusi commended the chief of Manga for being an agent of change in the community by ensuring that, community members adopted the appropriate farming technologies introduced by CSIR-SARI in contributing to food security in the country.
He emphasized that, his outfit would continue to execute its mandate of providing farmers in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions with appropriate farming technologies to increase food and fiber crop production based on a sustainable production systems.
Dr. Kusi further called on other chiefs to also become agents of change in their respective communities adding that, CSIR-SARI would continue to conduct agricultural research in Northern Ghana aimed at developing and introducing improved technologies that would enhance overall farm level productivity for improved livelihoods.
He explained further that, in order to realize its research objectives in more practical terms and to also reach majority of the farmers to make greater impact, CSIR-SARI over the years had adopted a bottom-up approach called Farming System Research (FSR) in its research activities.
The approach he said, emphasizes a thorough investigation of the circumstances of the farm household as a basis for determining the technical research programme.
It also demands the implementation of research mainly on farm and in MoFA staff and NGOs in the field.
A Post Harvest Technologist working with CSIR-SARI station at Manga, Issah Sugri, took the farmers through how to preserve their food produce after harvesting to enable them sell at the right time to make gains.
Also Research Scientist working with the CSIR-SARI station at Manga, Asungre Peter Anabire, stated that among the interventions of his outfit is the periodical release of new seeds varieties of crops which are mostly drought and insects resistant and entreated the farmers to adopt the new farming technologies to increase their crop production.
Story by: Emmanuel Akayeti
