|
Need for farmers' involvement with agricultural science
research - CSIR boss
Accra, March 25, Ghanadot/GNA - Professor
Emmanuel Owusu-Bennoah, Director-General of the Council for
Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), on Monday called
for the involvement of farmers in the development of any new
technology for their work.
He said the involvement of the end-users of any technology
would enable them to make inputs that would be relevant to
their work and make their own selection "and not anybody
from either the ministry or elsewhere selecting any
varieties for them".
Prof. Owusu-Bennoah explained that farmers had, for the past
been excluded from research on things related to their work,
saying that system was "not good enough".
He said there was the needed for a system that would involve
farmers who were the end-users of their technology for easy
harmonization.
Speaking at the opening of a three-day international
workshop to end the project on Participatory Rice Variety
Selection and Extension (PVS-E), Prof. Owusu-Bennoah said
the introduction of participatory ‘varietal’ selection,
would afford farmers the opportunity to choose varieties of
their needs and even cover a lager number of farmers.
He said there was the need to move agriculture forward,
increase rice security and fight poverty and hunger in
Africa by involving farmers in the whole process.
The workshop attended by stakeholders in the project from
Ghana, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso afforded participants
the opportunity to discuss results and outcomes and share
experiences of the field trials on the new rice varieties
for the three selected countries.
The new rice variety project conducted two years ago by West
African Rice Development Association (WARDA) in
collaboration with the National Agricultural Research
Systems of Ghana's CSIR was supported by United Nations
Development Programme under the theme: "The Promotion of New
Rice for Africa (NERICA) Through Extension-led PVS.
Mr. Kwaku Amu-Boafo of the Crop Services Department of
Ministry of Food and Agriculture said rice was a very
important dish in Ghana and government had attached
seriousness to its maximum promotion.
He assured the Ministry would help disseminate all the
recommendations by research following the varietal selection
process.
"Currently, the NERICA we are promoting was adequately
informed by the results of the PVS carried out by CSIR.”
Dr Mossa Sie, Regional Coordinator of the Project, called
for partnership among research scientists to combine efforts
to find solutions to the problems of farmers saying, "we can
only do this if we come together to interact with the
farmers and involve them in whatever we do".
He reiterated that scientists should follow farmers’
requests for high yields, quality and short maturity, among
others.
The first phase of the project, which will end in April in
Ghana, had new varieties of rice distributed to selected
farmers in the Northern, Volta, Upper East, Eastern and
Western regions in trials and this yielded positive results
that have been welcomed by farmers.
The NERICA rice, which has maturity period of 95 days, is
resistant to pests and diseases, is drought tolerant can
also be described as upland variety that can be grown at the
backyard.
The second phase of the project is to extend the varieties
to other farmers and go commercial.
GNA
|
