The Savannah Agricultural Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR- SARI) with funding support from the “Kirkhouse Trust Project” based in the United Kingdom has initiated moves to help train communities in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions to go into seed production.

As part of the process, Agriculture Extension Agents drawn from the Bawku Municipal, Bawku West, Binduri, Garu, and Pusiga Districts including CSIR -SARI Laboratory Technicians and PHD students from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, University for Development Studies, University of Cape Coast and University of Ghana have been trained to become Trainer of Trainers (ToT).

Dr Francis Kusi, Leading Research Officer at the Manga Agricultural Research Institute and a research fellow on the Kirkhouse Trust Project, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) during the Community Seed Production Workshop organized at Manga near Bawku in the Upper East on Tuesday, explained that participants were expected to go back to their respective communities to re-train farmers who were willing to go into cowpea seed production so as to sell improved seeds to farmers in the communities.

He stated that most of the agro input dealers were located in the regional and district levels, depriving majority of farmers in the remote areas access to certified seeds and other farm inputs.

“Based on their crop management skills, some farmers from the remote areas will be selected and trained further as seed producers in their respective communities. These individuals will then serve as sources of improved seeds to other farmers in the remote farming communities in Northern Ghana”.

Dr Kusi said the project which had among its objectives to empower more of the communities to become seed out-growers would facilitate and link them to both the private and the government’s seed companies to buy improved seeds.
He said apart from the project breaking the bottlenecks confronting the rural smallholders in accessing certified and improved seeds, it would also offer employment to the teaming youth, and urged the youth to take advantage of the programme and enrol on it.

He indicated that the Kirkhouse Trust Project in 2016 supported CSIR- SARI with him being the Lead Scientist to come out with five important commercial cowpea varieties in Ghana which were resistant to climate change, pest and crop diseases.

Dr Kwesi Atokple, a former Research Scientist of CSIR- SARI who facilitated the training programme, said the effective implementation of the Community Seed Production would help complement the government’s flagship programmes of Planting for Food and Jobs, the One Village, One Dam and One Factory, One District policies.

He said the Project would want a paradigm shift from farming as usual to farming as business and impressed upon the ToT to take their work seriously by ensuring that their respective communities benefited enormously from the project.