Chief of Staff says nation must embrace science to deal with dwindling fortunes in agric

A Deputy Chief of Staff in Charge of Operations, Mr. Kenneth Wujangi, has said Ghana must look to science to address threat in the agriculture sector.

Addressinga forum organized in Accra under the auspices of the Sustainable Development Alliance (SDA), a non-governmental organization, under the theme “How can public-private partnerships move vegetable value chain forward in Ghana?,” Wujangi also called for partnership in vegetable production.

“With the threat of changing climate, dwindling water resources, increased pest infestation and chronic malnutrition which threaten to prevent us from achieving our food security goal ,it is important that we look to scientific advancement for our answers,” he said.

There are vivid signs of the repercussions of Climate Change on Ghana's weather patterns and agriculture.

For a country whose water bodies were created by torrential, continues rainfalls, Ghana's rainfall patterns are becoming increasingly dry with time.

By 2020, an estimated 75–250 million people in Africa would be exposed to increased water stress, a 50 per cent reduction in yields from rain-fed agriculture in some regions and agricultural production, as well as severely compromised access to food.

In Ghana, crops are getting destroyed due to periods of extreme heat and heavy rains.

Almost 91 percent of respondents in a 2012 survey conducted by the Ghana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) on the impact of climate change on the livelihood of farmers stated that their income decreased due to loss of crops or livestock resulting from bad weather conditions.

Wujangi also said institutions and stakeholder in the agric sector must disseminate relevant information on best practices to farmers in remote parts of the country as a way to boost vegetable production.

According to him, government had rolled out the green economy initiative and a number of irrigation schemes to ensure that there was robust production of vegetables and other food crops.