Cowpea farmers in Bono Region appeal for more improved varieties

Cowpea farmers in the Bono Re­gion have appealed to the government for the develop­ment and release of more improved cowpea vari­eties that are pests and drought resistant to enhance cultivation and livelihood of farmers.

According to the farmers, the varieties of Cowpea, includ­ing Songotra T being cultivated by farmers were prone to pest’s infestation resulting in low yields and farmers’ income.

Mr Prince Sie, a 30-year-old Cowpea farmer at Banda Ahenk­ro, noted that farmers were losing a huge chunk of the crop to pest’s infestation during production, thus compelling farmers to rely heavily on pesticides to control the menace.

The situation, he noted, was increasing cost of production and was inimical to the environment, hence the appeal to change the narrative.

Mr Sie was speaking on the sidelines of a day’s training work­shop for selected Cowpea farmers on a new developed pot-Borer Resistance Cowpea (PBR,) by the Council for Scientific and Indus­trial Research (CSIR) at Wenchi in the Bono Region yesterday.

The training workshop, organised by the Ghana Chapter of Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) in partner­ship with the CSIR, was attended by 120 farmers drawn from five Districts in the Bono Region.

The Districts are Banda, Seikwa, Tain, Wenchi and Sunyani municipal.

Making a presentation on de­velopment and status of Cowpea in Ghana, Dr Daniel Osei Ofosu of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, said the new Cowpea (PBR) had come to solve the prob­lem of low yield that had charac­terised cowpea production, making it unattractive to most farmers.

According to him, the PBR cowpea required minimum use of pesticides (0-2 applications) as compared to 6-8 applications in Songotra, hence reduce production cost to the farmer.

Dr Osei Ofosu added that even though the PBR cowpea is a genet­ically modified crop, it has no side effect since GM processes only adopt natural processes in arriving at the same results.

He allayed the fears of the public about Genetically Modified (GM) foods, saying all GM foods went through regulatory require­ments before being released onto the market.

He emphasised the need for farmers to incorporate scientific methods of crop cultivation to mitigate the effect of climate change which was posing a threat to food security in the country.

The Bono Regional Agri­cultural Extension Officer, Mr Isaac Agyei Mensah, appealed to the media to help propagate the message on the new Cowpea in order to get more farmers go into Cowpea production.

According to him GMOs products have come to stay and called on Ghanaians to embrace it in order to increase food produc­tion in the country.

Mr Richard Ampadu-Ameyaw, a representative of Open forum on Agricultural Biotechnology Ghana (OFAB), also appealed to Ghanaian farmers to embrace the new technology in order to enable them to increase their yield and improve their livelihoods.

 FROM DANIEL DZIRASAH, WENCHI

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