Feo (U/E), March 24, GNA – The Navrongo-Bolgatanga Catholic Diocesan Development Organisation (NABOCADO) says indigenous innovation, through the use of local resources, is key to achieving sustainable agriculture practices and called on farmers to adopt same.
Mr Dominic Avea Aniah, the Director, Livelihood Advocacy, NABOCADO, said the adverse impact of climate change, coupled with the excessive use of agrochemicals on farmlands, were deteriorating the soil nutrients, causing harm to the environment and posing threat to food security and livelihoods.
That, he said, called for local inventions using indigenous knowledge, skills and available resources to produce biochemical, compost, organic manure and animal feed, to increase food and livestock production while preserving the environment.
“Farmer innovations and technologies need to be better recognised and supported by formal researchers, development actors and government as a more responsive, sustainable and efficient means towards improving rural food security and reducing poverty,” he said.
Mr Aniah was speaking at Feo, a farming community in the Bongo District of the Upper East Region, during a farmer innovation exhibition fair, organised by NABOCADO, in collaboration with the Association of Church-based Development Projects.
It was held on the “Scaling Up Local Capacity to Innovate for Food and Nutrition Security (SULCI-FaNS), a three year project with funding support from the MISEREOR in Germany.
The project aims to strengthen the innovation capacities of small-scale farmers, particularly women and women groups, to improve food and nutrition security and increase resilience to climate change and poverty.
The fair brought together smallholder farmers from selected communities in the Bongo District, Builsa South and West Mamprusi to showcased their work including production of animal feed and compost.
Mr Aniah said the innovation fair, which showcased technologies in agro-processing to add value to some agriculture products, was to create a platform for farmers and stakeholders to learn and mainstream the new innovations into their farming practices.
He, therefore, called on the District Assemblies to mainstream local farming technologies into their medium- term development plans and upscale them to reach more farmers to ensure they adopted the practices to increase productivity.
Mr Edgar Drah, Bongo District Director, Department of Agriculture, commended NABOCADO and its partners for building the capacities of smallholder farmers to use local resources to improve food production.
Mr Joseph Nchor, the SULCI-FaNS Project Coordinator, noted that the project was being implemented in other countries including Burkina Faso, Kenya and Cameroon.
When farmers, particularly women, were empowered it would lead to sustainable agriculture production and development, he said.
GNA