The
Community Action for Yam Seed (CAY-SEED) Project is aimed at increasing food
security and wealth creation by addressing some of the major limitations to yam
production.
The
three-year project is targeted at improving the quality and productivity of
3,000 smallholder farmers through innovative agricultural interventions in
eight major yam growing communities in Ghana and Nigeria.
It
is being implemented by the Crops Research Institute (CRI) of the Council for
Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and partners, with a $3.5million funding
from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – the CSIR-CRI is making $0.5million
additional in-kind contribution.
Seeds
are key component in the drive for food security and sustainability, especially
in these times of climate change and its impact in agricultural production. Availability
of yam seed constitutes as much as 50% of total cost of yam production.
“Coupled
with this is the poor quality of available seed yam; damage from nematodes,
viruses, tuber rots and bacterial infections are major contributions to the
poor seed quality and yield reductions in yam,” observed Dr. Stella Ennin,
Project Leader and Director of the CSIR-CRI. “This partnership intervention is
therefore vital to raise the level of seed yam production in Nigeria, which is
the lead producer of yam in the world, and Ghana, which is the leading exporter
of yam in the world”.
The
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) considers the CAY-SEED grant as a “critical
investment”.
“We
identified seed systems as one of the primary constraints across cassava, sweet
potatoes, bananas and yam; all the crops that we invest in,” noted Claire Kpaka,
an Associate Program Officer at the Foundation. “For us, we see CAY-SEED as an
important opportunity to demonstrate to farmers the best practices in
maintaining clean seed at their own farm level.”
Whilst
commending development partners for the support for agricultural development, Dr.
Ennin pleaded with the Ghanaian and African governments “to provide the needed
support to agricultural research and development to realize African government’s
vision as enshrined in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), of
making agriculture the vehicle for economic transformation on the continent”.
Ashanti
Regional Minister, Samuel Sarpong, addressing the project launch, acknowledged
it is only through research that problems of low crop yield would be addressed.
According
to him, the government of Ghana with the support of the International Fund for
Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Bank is making significant
strides in addressing the challenges faced by research into the crop.
Story
by Kofi Adu Domfeh
No comments:
Post a Comment