The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) will by mid next year develop a Digital Agricultural Innovation Hub (DAIH) for the management of agricultural data.
The Deputy Director General of CSIR, Professor Paul Bosu, who disclosed this said, the DAIH when developed, would enable the council put all technologies developed over the years together to be made accessible to farmers and the public.
He was speaking at the National Coordinating Committee Meeting for Research Extension-Farmer-Linkages Committee (RELC) yesterday, in Accra.
According to Prof. Bosu, various technologies had been developed with many of them in scientific publications and paper manuals yet were not accessible to farmers.
He explained that, the hub would be simplified and packaged to be easily accessed by farmers to get relevant information about their farm produce saying, “we are thinking of putting them in an application so farmers can access such information on their phone.”
Prof. Bosu explained that, RELC was a platform for researchers mainly from CSIR and extension officers from the Ministry for Food and Agriculture (MoFA) and farmers.
He said, their mandate was to ensure that the three parties met regularly to discuss issues that bordered on farming and crop production.
Highlighting on some achievements of the CSIR, he indicated that, more than 25 metric tonnes of seed crops such as rice maize and cowpeas had been produced and supplied to farmers.
In addition, Prof. Bosu stated that, extension manuals on best ways for farmers to produce varietiesof crops had been produced as well.
In a presentation on the 2018 farmers and other value chain actors and constraints and policies, Mr Emmanuel Odame, Director of RELCS, Public Extension Coordinator, mentioned land encroachment as a major policy issue affecting farmers in the Greater Accra and Northern regions.
He explained that, most of the land especially in the Greater Accra Region were encroached for estate development adding that, “we do not have enough lands for agricultural use.”
Mr Odame named poor road networks, high cost of input, inadequate storage facilities and unavailability of simple processing machine to enable farmers produce in excess as other policy issues affecting farmers.
He added that, the number of farmers constraints in 2017 and 2018 were 603 and 527 respectively.
Mr Kwaku Owusu Baah, the Technical Advisor to Global Affairs Canada, on his part urged the CSIR and MoFA to address the communication gaps which existed among them.
This, he said, would enable both parties collaborate to achieve their required mandate.
BY ABEDUWAA LUCY APPIAH
