The Livelihood and Environment Ghana (LEG), an environmentally-centered non-governmental organisation (NGO), says it has upped climate resilient adaptation strategies, empowering more than 1,000 indigenous farmers with smart and climate resilient farming practices to sustain their livelihoods.
As climate change impact rears its ugly head in parts of the country, Mr Richard Adjei-Poku, the Executive Director of LEG, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview that the beneficiary farmers had also been trained on how to prepare and apply organic weedicides.
With support from the Global Greengrant Fund (GGF), he said the farmers spread across the Ashanti and Ahafo Regions, had also benefited from alternative livelihood support programmes in bee keeping, liquid soap and brown sugar production.
The Women Empowerment and Development Association (TWEDA), a partner NGO facilitated the training, with most of them drawn from Dwenase and surrounding communities of Apesika, Kwafo, Kwa-bena and Master Nkwanta in the Ahafo Region.
In the Ashanti Region, farmers mostly from Bogyampa and Tipokrom and their adjoining communities also benefited from the training and empowerment.
Mr Adjei-Poku said climate change’s impacts of erratic rains, extreme heat and unpredictable weather patterns increase the vulnerabilities of indigenous and subsistent farmers.
He underscored the need for the nation to support and empower indigenous farmers with climate resilient farm practices, supply them with drought resistance seeds and crops.
Mr Adjei-Poku said if prepared properly, mulching supressed the soil and to cope with direct sunlight, saying bed farming enabled them to store rainfall.
He said the nation’s over-reliance on rain-fed agriculture was not the best and called on the government to construct more irrigation facilities and small dams for farmers.
Mr Adjei-Poku also advised them to also plant and nurture trees in their farms, saying tree planting remained one of the best climate change adaptation strategies.
Source: Access Agric
