The Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International (CABI) has introduced a new approach to farming in Ghana with the aim of increasing food security and improving farm yields.

The initiative, called Plantwise, is being implemented by CABI together with the Plant Protection Regulatory Services Directorate (PPRSD) of the Ministry of Agriculture.

The project has two major components under which it provide plant clinics and knowledge bank services to local rural farmers to enable them to prevent crop loses and increase production.

Also, farmers would regularly attend plant clinics which would operate like a medical doctor’s consultancy to provide advice on demand, tailored to the farmer’s individual needs.

With access to these services farmers could tackle pests and diseases and produce healthy crops and increase yields.

The global Plantwise initiative, led by CABI, was first launched in 2011 but introduced in Ghana in 2012 with the first pilot plant clinics established in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions.

At a media briefing in Accra, Dr Victor Attuquaye Clottey, Regional Co-ordinator of CABI West Africa, explained that after the clinics’ early success of providing timely plant health advice to farmers, operations were scaled-up to Northern, Eastern and Volta regions.

He said the programme had so far reached out to 6,374 farmers in the five regions where the Plantwise clinic was currently being rolled out through the organisation of 1,310 clinic sessions with more than 2,854 farm visits by various extension officers.

More than 34 factsheets have also been developed with a total number of 72 clinics submitting data collected at plant clinics.

The data is captured and analysed in the Plantwise knowledge bank in order to give vital information about major crop pests and diseases which is useful in making strategic decisions.

Dr Clottey said the plant clinics were supported and run by diverse organisations with a common interest in providing practical support to farmers.

NGOs, farmer organisations, municipalities and community-based organisations were among the largest group of plant clinic operators, but universities, research institutes and private companies also work closely with CABI to run plant clinics.

He said a total of 72 established clinics and 66 active clinics are now running in 39 districts in the five regions.

Dr Clottey said national and deputy coordinators as well as a national data managers have been appointed from the Agriculture Ministry to play key roles in the supervision of the Plantwise initiative being implemented in Ghana and other parts of the world.

He said the programme would exist until 2020 to help ensure that farmers have more knowledge on fertilizers usages, how to control pest and manage invasive species, so they could produce more food to feed themselves and the world at large.

Mrs Milly Kyofa-Boamah, Director of the PPRSD, said pests and diseases in crop production were threats to food security in the country as the agricultural sector was facing systematic annual losses of major crops caused by insects and diseases.

She said the huge crop loss in Ghana could partly be attributed to limited access to plant health services due to inadequate extension agents which was estimated to be one extension officer to 1300 to 1500 farmers, instead of the FAO’s approved ratio of one officer to 500 farmers.

Mrs Boamah said the Plantwise initiative, under its plant clinic programme that deliver practical advice to farmers is greatly contributing to PPRSD’s mission of reducing crop loses, and therefore, her outfit is strongly partnering CABI to provide the needed knowledge.

The Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Agricultural Faculties of selected universities in Ghana are supporting the Plantwise initiative.

Mr Christopher Gaitu, Plantwise National Coordinator in Ghana, urged the media to support activities of the plantwise programme to ensure that a lot more farmers benefited from the opportunity while calling for more financial support to help extend the programme to the remaining regions of Ghana.