Farmers task SARI to focus on building capacities for utilisation of products

Participants at a workshop have commended the Savannah Agricultural Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-SARI) for its ingenuity in developing early maturing and high yielding crop varieties for farmers to address climate change challenges.The participants, however, expressed disappointment that most farmers in the region were unaware of the products and appealed to the CSIR-SARI to focus on capacity building to raise awareness for the utilisation of products through partnership.Mr. Mujeed R. Adams, the Secretary of the Wa Out-growers Businesses made the commendation at a two-day 'Feed the Future Ghana Market System and Resilience Activity Agenda for Ghana MSR and CSIR-SARI Research Pipeline Workshop' held in Wa.He said farmers in the region had limited knowledge and low adoption of modern technologies and urged SARI to embark on outreach programmes to raise awareness of farmers.He called for the establishment of agricultural mechanisation centres to benefit f armers since the supply of equipment and farm machinery and cost of technologies were high and unaffordable to most farmers.Mr. Adams encouraged SARI to maintain a robust local seeds system saying, 'We must not lose our local seeds to foreign varieties and technologies.''We must also make new technologies responsive to our ecological specifics and locations,' he added.Mr. Adams encouraged the SARI and other private sector agricultural equipment manufacturing organisations to manufacture cowpea, soyabeans harvesters for timely harvesting to address post-harvest losses and to ensure clean grains and seeds to meet international standards.He also called for the provision of warehouses for the storage of grains, which could be used to serve as collateral to qualify them for soft loans from financial institutions.The warehouses would also help reduce the incidents of mixing chemicals with grains, which were harmful to consumers.Mr Alfred Akolgo, an official of Golden Shea, called on sheabutter producers to always process their butter in a close and hygienic environment to maintain quality, meet international standards and to attract foreign investors.He called on companies manufacturing agricultural implements to provide equipment and technologies to sheabutter processors to aid them to produce quality butter for the international market.The participants also demanded planters, thrashers, warehouses, tractors and harvesters, to facilitate their farming and land banks for farmers who were in dire need of land for the farming activities.With the provision of quality seeds and new technologies and equipment to increase quality production and processing would also increase to international standards.The workshop was to enlighten the companies and the private sector of the improved seeds and other technologies varieties available for utilisation.There was an exhibition of farm machinery, cowpea, soyabeans, groundnut and sheabutter products at the workshop.Source: Ghana News Agency