The West Africa Food System Resilience Programme (FSRP Ghana) brought together a team of scientists, practitioners, extension workers, value chain actors, institutional representatives and other stakeholders from the 20th to the 21st to identify, examine and select locally developed, tested and proven innovations and technologies for climate-smart agricultural practices in Ghana.
They also examined locally applicable technologies developed by the PRSP's regional research partners - the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF) and the CGIAR - a consortium of international agricultural research institutions. The exercise is in line with the implementation of a key PRSP objective to promote at least 15 climate-smart, nutrition-sensitive, youth-friendly and gender-responsive technological innovations for adoption by 240,000 beneficiaries in selected PRSP value chains.
Based on their experiences and interactions with local and foreign stakeholders, the experts shared their knowledge of the innovative agricultural technologies they have studied, developed, tried and tested. These exchanges were followed by debates and deliberations on the implications, challenges and opportunities of the technologies presented. The experts also dissected advances in genetic engineering - including plant and animal breeding; sustainable plant and animal production systems; advances in animal health; sustainable agroecology and agroforestry engineering technologies - including mechanisation and irrigation, among a range of topics.
The team has already developed the first draft of a set of technologies (a bouquet of technologies in the FSRP value chains - rice, maize, soya, poultry and tomatoes), from soil preparation to waste management.
The national coordinator of the FSRP-Ghana, Osei Owusu Agyeman, urged the think tank to take into account the cost-benefit analysis of the adoption and use of these new technologies. In his view, this would enable potential beneficiaries and consumers to better evaluate and compare existing technologies, taking into account the themes on which the FSRP-Ghana's activities are anchored: "We should at all times be thinking about how to attract private sector interest in everything we do," he added.
To ensure better visibility and understanding of innovative agricultural technologies among stakeholders, the FSRP will promote increased awareness and interest in the adoption of new agricultural technologies among its priority commodities. To this end, a catalogue of appropriate technologies to be disseminated by the FSRP and MOFA will be developed, training protocols will be updated, on-farm demonstrations will be set up, and demonstration manuals and videos will be produced to train farmers in the application of these innovations.
The team is also responsible for identifying opportunities for the development of future innovations and for devising ways of scaling up these technologies in the agricultural sector.
