About 300 farmers within the Sawla-Tuna-Kalba district of the Northern Region have benefited from newly-introduced varieties from the Traditional African Vegetables (TAV) Project.
The project, which is to enable the farmers and traders observe and select the various vegetable varieties of their preference based on dietary and market considerations, is to help the beneficiaries enhance their income generation.
The farmers were taken through some field training in best ways of cultivating the new varieties to increase yields that will improve their livelihoods as well as help generate some revenue to expand their agribusiness and produce more to meet the market demand.
The three-year project is being implemented in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Cameroon, and will enhance productivity, competitiveness and marketing of TAV for improved income and nutrition in West Africa.
The traditional African vegetables are said to have nutritious value that contributes to local diets for human consumption and adapt well to the local conditions.
The farmer-led varietal evaluation is part of efforts to ensure there is effective collaboration between farmers and researchers to ensure that farmer knowledge, experience and needs are adequately incorporated in research output so as to enhance income and nutrition among people in the rural areas.
The beneficiaries, who were drawn from selected communities within the Sawla-Tuna-Kalba district were made to observe the various vegetable varieties such as okra, egg-plant, amaranth (alefu), jute mallow (ayoyo), roselle (bra) and African nightshades — all being local products cultivated on the demonstration field.
As part of the project to promote production and consumption of local vegetable, the farmers will be supported with multiple seeds to cultivate the varieties of their choice for both household consumptions and income generation during the dry season.
To ensure sustainability, some selected farmers will also be trained as commercial seed growers for specific vegetables in order to maintain the seed stock, as well as be provided with technical support to enhance the quality of seeds for good bumper harvests.
The project is being led by AVRDC – The World Vegetable Centre, with financial support from the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF/ WECARD) with the local partners being the University for Development Studies and Savannah Agricultural Research Institute (SARI).
After the initial beneficiary farmers, other farmers will also be trained to expand the number of farmers involved in the project.
All the beneficiary farmers are also expected to reach out to other farmers in the district and introduce them to the new varieties.
Professor George Nyarko, Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at University for Development Studies (UDS), encouraged farmers to adopt the local varieties, saying they are the best in nutritional values.
According to Prof. Nyarko, using exotic varieties does not give enough nutrients to build up the body or help generate income, since within some days after harvest they start going bad.
He noted that apart from producing to earn income, there is also need for farmers to add to their households’ foods and replenish lost energy as well worn-out tissues in the system to prevent any outbreak of diseases.
Mr. Yakubu Balma Issaka — Project Coordinator, Enhancing Productivity Competitiveness and Marketing of TAV for Improved Income and Nutrition in West and Central Africa — said lack of quality seeds, limited knowledge of post-harvest and processing, poorly-developed value chains, and the low level of nutritional awareness are affecting food security in the country.
According to the Project Coordinator, most countries fall within the top-20 worst-affected countries due to the proportion of under-nutrition; adding that inadequate intake of protein affects the human system, causing people’s inability to contribute to the nation’s socio-economic needs.
Lack of dietary protein is a key factor since most populations consume only cereals and cassava as their main food, since they contain high carbohydrates and are low in nutrients.
There is an urgent need to identify and promote the most productive and nutritious cultivars of the proposed focused vegetables crops for their income and consumptive contribution to food and nutritional security he added.
He said the project is also aimed at enrolling about 5,000 households in each target country to improve livelihoods of the smallholder farmers and alleviate poverty by end of the project.
Those households will be selected from the farming communities with the focus on women and youth, since 80 percent of subsistence farmers engaged in vegetable production are women; with 94 percent of the vegetable vendors also being women.
It will also help strengthen the role of women through training in vegetable production and marketing facilitated to access land and create community gardens. Investment cannot yield anything without adequate production and business skills of the targetted beneficiaries, he said.
Lydia Dapula, a farmer, expressed gratitude for the project; saying it has helped produce high yields which increased their income from GH?30 to GH?96 during the harvest season this year.
She noted that most of the farmers were used to one-way produce, which does not attract buyers; but introduction of the new varieties has helped make good markets and also expand farms to feed the nation and export the rest for income generation.
Lack of farming tools, irrigational scheme and funds are some of the challenges confronting the farmers, and therefore they appealed for farm inputs and fertiliser to improve their agribusiness.
Source: B&FTonline