Local Seeds Are Still Viable-Farmers
The National President of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, Mr Wepia Addo Awal Adugwala has reminded policy makers that the problems bedeviling Ghana’s Agricultural sector has nothing to do with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).
Mr Awal Adugwala identified irrigation, Agriculture mechanization, bad roads, and access to markets as some of the pressing issues militating against agriculture and food security.
He said the presence of GMOs in Ghana would not solve food security, saying, “already a lot of farmers in Northern Ghana and the middle belt produce a lot of food but have no ready market, storage system, bad roads among other challenges”.
He was speaking at a workshop organised by the Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Organizational Development (CIKOD), with Members of the Ghana Agroecology Movement in the forest zone and key stakeholders in farming to streamline issues in the Agricultural sector.
The workshop sought to review activities of the farmers as well as sensitize them and consumers on the commercialization of GMOs on the Ghanaian market.
The workshop agreed on concrete steps to strengthen the Agroecology movement in the forest zone and discussed the implications of the commercialization of the 14 novel GMO products comprising eight maize and six soya bean products by the National Bio-Safety Authority on the Ghanaian market.