1,000 FARMERS UNDERGO CAPACITY BUILDING EXERCISE (SEPT 25, PAGE 21)

MORE than 1,000 farmers from 15 communities in the Lawra District in the Upper West region have benefited from a capacity building exercise aimed at improving the livelihood and security of small holder farmers in the district.
Care International, a non-governmental organisation, in collaboration with the Nandom Agricultural Project, organised the programme dubbed: “Conservation Agricultural Project (CAP)”.
Care International and Nandom Agricultural Project have since June, 2007 been mobilising farmers in the Lawra District. Their activities have basically centred on livestock projection and crop production improvements, as well as women development.
Farmers are mobilised based on participatory technology development approaches, which are expected to increase crop yield and production of targeted communities through improved soil conservation and natural resource management practices.
At Walateng, the farmers demonstrated how degraded land had been reclaimed for agricultural purposes through a technique called the "half moon and zia" method. This innovation, adopted from neighbouring Burkina Faso, has been used to reclaim an entirely degraded land for food production.
In an address, the Project Manager, Mr Stan Nasaal, appealed to the farmers to put into practice what they had learnt under the project in order to solve the problem of food shortage.
He stated that there was nothing such as degraded and barren land, if the right techniques were used.
At Ketuo, the farmers field school (FFS) was organised for more than 30 farmers.
The FFS is a school without walls for the farmers, where they are taught nutrient management and practice of land tillage.
The knowledge acquired from the demonstration farms under the school would be applied on the various farms.
Throwing more light on the CAP, the Project Manager Mr Yabepone Cyril, said they had been liaising with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) to solve the problem of low staffing in their agricultural extension services.
The District Chief Executive for Lawra, Mr Sampson Abu, thanked the organisers and donors of the project and pledged his administration’s commitment to working with the them to raise the living standards of farmers to an appreciable level.