Accra, Dec. 17, GNA - A 15-member National Integrated Pest Management Oversight Committee was on Wednesday inaugurated in Accra with a task to develop early warning system to reduce the increasing dependence on chemical pesticides, which are often harmful to human health and the environment.

Major (rtd) Courage Quashigah, Minister of Food and Agriculture, who inaugurated the reconstituted committee, said members should not wait till a situation, which could be solved became an emergency before "you hurriedly put pressure on us to spend so much money to address that".

He said the ecology was changing at a fast rate due to the degrading of the soil, pollution of the water, indiscriminate dumping of refuse and migration of persons across the borders, hence, the rise in new pest diseases which could not be immediately detected. "Migrants from the neighbouring countries, sometimes carry alone food items like snails and vegetables and these easily get to our environment spreading very fast".

The committee will also, among other things, promote national standards, code of ethics and certification for good IPM practices, provide policy advice in all aspects, encourage and support research that would be very relevant to the agricultural production environment that could be easily adopted by farmers.

Major Quashigah noted that IPM programmes in Ghana were initiated in 1980 in response to the extensive and widespread crop losses caused by major pest outbreaks which included cassava mealybug, cassava green mite, the mango mealybug, the larger grain borer, water hyacinth and the cereal stem borers.

It was supported by the German Development Corporation, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO0 and MOFA. According to him, some non-governmental organisations have incorporated IPM programmes into their fieldworks and that has yielded positive results.

Mr Kwaku Owusu Baah, Chief Director of MOFA said Ghana loses about 30 percent of her agriculture crops to controllable pests and diseases and IPM strategies were good agriculture practices to address the problem and urged members to ensure its success. 17 Dec. 03