The Member of Parliament for Bekwai in the Ashanti region, Ralph Poku-Adusei is advocating the institution of an effective communication mechanism to ensure timely delivery of weather information to farmers in rural communities across the country.
The concerned lawmaker expressed worry about the plight of farmers in rural communities who depend on the vagaries of the weather for their farming practices.
This follows a parliamentary question he posed to the minister for Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku on the steps being taken to promote climate-resilient crop varieties and strenthen adaptive practicies among farmers affected by erratic rainfall parterns.
Responding to measures to promote climate-resilient crops, the minister disclosed that, his outfit through the National Variety Release and Registration Committee (NVRRC) and Council for Scientific and Industrial Research have released climate-resilient varieties of major food staples including maize, rice, cassava, soybean, and cowpea to farmers for cultivation.
He assured of the commitment of Government through the Feed Ghana initiative to support the production of early generation seeds for distribution to farmers.
The sector minister who is also the Member of Parliament for Asutifi North said “the ministry is collaborating with other ministries, departments, agencies and agricultural projects to ensure that all agricultural seed and planting material incentives provided to smallholder farmers are climate-resilient”.
Additionally, Mr Opoku revealed that, his office is in the process of finalising a Long-Term Climate Resilient Agriculture Strategy whiles there is a dedicated policy under the Food and Agricultural Development Policy (FASDEP) of ensuring sustainability breeding, multiplication and promotion of climate-resilient cropping and livestock systems to respond to climate vulnerability challenges in the agriculture sector.
With regards to strenthening adaptive practices due to erratic rainfalls, Mr Eric Opoku said “the ministry has since 2016 been implementing Climate-Smart Agriculture and Food Security Plan which promotes Climate Change Adaptation practicies with smallholder farmers as the main beneficiaries” and urged the need to scale it up.
According to the minister, the ministry is collaborating with the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) for the provision of reliable weather information to the over 80% of smallholder farmers in the country who depends on rainfall for their agriculture practices.
He noted that Climate Information Services provide farmers with advisories on the best time to plant their crops and the crop varieties to plant, even as the capacities of Public
