A Project Manager with ActionAid Ghana, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), Mr Abubakari Ayuba, has called on government to invest in the production of organic fertiliser in the country.
Mr Ayuba, who is in-charge of a four-year climate change adaptation project by the NGO dubbed the Northern Ghana Integrated Development Project (NGIDP), said the use of organic fertiliser formed part of adaptation measures aimed at reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere and promoting sustainable ecological agriculture.
“We are calling on government to move away from subsidising synthetic fertiliser and putting that funds into the production of compost or organic fertilizer, so that we will have more infrastructure for the production of compost for our farmers”, he said.
Mr Ayuba made the call on the sidelines of a regional stakeholders’ forum on the implementation of climate change adaptation policy in Wa, capital of the Upper West Region on Wednesday.
The forum was to access the impact of the implementation of the NGIDP in the last three years in the Northern, Savannah, Upper West and Upper East Regions respectively, and to also solicit views of participants on climate change adaptation strategies for national level consultation with government.
Mr Ayuba explained that synthetic fertilisers which were imported were sometimes not available on the market and cited that farmers had in the last two years been struggling to get adequate fertiliser for crop production in the country.
“We need to develop our systems to get internal farm inputs we can rely on, to introduce more climate adaptation programmes as well as target small holder women farmers and make them, more resilient to climate change”, he said.
The Programmes Manager said studies had shown that Ghana loses GH₵200 billion each year to issues of climate change through floods and droughts which affect agriculture and also led to loss of human lives.
“We need to protect ourselves against these incidents through the use of alternative livelihoods such as planting more trees instead of cutting them and picking Shea fruits to produce Shea butter for sale instead of cutting down the economic trees to burn into charcoal”, he advised.
“We at ActionAid have actually studied the just reviewed Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of the country and we have realised that, the Government of Ghana has 13 programmes for climate adaptation and 34 programmes for climate change mitigation”, he mentioned.
He explained that since Ghana did not emit more carbons as compared to the Western world, the country should look at more interventions, targeting the the poor and vulnerable such as small holder farmers.
FROM LYDIA DARLINGTON FORDJOUR, WA
