Tamale, Sept. 23, GNA - Mr Sylvester Adongo, Northern Regional Director of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) has stated that only 10, 000 hectares or 0.05 per cent of Ghana's agricultural land was under irrigation.

He said the country could only make progress in its agricultural production, when it increases the area of irrigation of its agricultural land under cultivation.

He noted that while only 20 per cent of the world's farmland was irrigated, it produced over 40 per cent of the world's food supply. Mr Adongo was addressing a four-day international conference on

"Increasing water productivity of rain-fed cropping systems", in Tamale on Monday.

The forum, which was a collaboration of the Challenge Program (CP) on Water and Food and the Savanna Agriculture Research Institute (SARI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), had 40 participants drawn from 18 countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The forum seeks among other things to provide the participants insights on how to monitor the fate of water and water productivity, by learning from each other's experience and from recognized experts. It would also review findings on in-field water harvesting and conservation impacts of soil and residue management on land and water productivity, and components of the balance for rain-fed crops in Africa.

Mr Adongo said it was in recognition of the need to boost agricultural productivity through increased irrigation that government had set a target of putting 100,000 hectares of land under cultivation by 2015.

Mr Adongo noted that Northern Ghana had been experiencing erratic rainfall pattern as a result of the global climatic change and the occurrence of long in-season dry spells and floods which accounts for 50 per cent of crop failure.

He said the striking rainfall limitation to food production in Northern Ghana was not necessarily the amount received but in the distribution.

He said for instance in 2007 the area experienced drought at the beginning of the season leading to crop losses, but when the rains resumed in July, they were excessive leading to loss of lives, homes and crops.

He said this resulted in over 332,000 people in the three regions of the north being displaced with a total of 34,336 houses destroyed and 56 reported deaths.

Additionally, he said, 1,500 kilometers of roads were destroyed and 4,560 hectares of farm land submerged with more than 197,000 metric tones of crops lost.

Dr. Stephen Nutsugah, acting Director of SARI said as their contribution to national development the institute had developed technologies to support the agricultural sector.

He said SARI had developed and released two new high-yielding 67-day cowpea varieties called Apagbaala and Marfo-Tuya and also released three early maturing cassava varieties that yield between 8 to 12 months.

He said the project had also introduced and financed the construction of 96 low cost ferro-cement type of water reservoir for use in poor households in Northern Ghana.