EAWAG holds organic farming forum for farmers

The Environment and Agriculture Women Association of Ghana (EAWAG) has embarked on separate community outreach sensitisation forum for farmers on the need to practice organic farming to maintain farmlands fertility for healthy food crop production.

The beneficiary farmers were organised respectively at Esereso, Wabirease, Tumiamayenko, Apprakukrom, Bofokrom and Abronye, all farming communities in the Sunyani West Municipality of the Bono Region.

The project, funded by Global Green Grants Fund (GGGF) is being implemented in collaboration with the Centre for Climate Change and Gender Studies (3CGS) of the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR) on the theme: “Promoting Best Farming Practices that Conserve Biodiversity, Mitigates Climate Change and Promotes Environmental Sustainability”.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency on the side-lines of the forum at Esereso, Madam Emelia Kyeremeh, the leader of EAWAG indicated that the programme also seeks to help farmers to adopt climate change innovative farming practices and avoid bush burning, deforestation and the continuous agro-chemicals application on their farms.

Mad. Kyeremeh said climate change had become a reality through “our own unsustainable environmental and farming practices, with farmers mostly being the affected group”.

In view of that, she said there was the need for farmers to be inventive and engage in best farming practices to avoid post-harvest losses, stressing that organic agriculture “is the way to go for quality food production”

Mad. Kyeremeh cited cultivation of cover crops such as cowpea and tree crops like cashew, coconut and cocoa, in addition to the practice of shifting cultivation, mixed-cropping, mulching and the use of animal droppings to enrich the soil for best organic crop yields.

EAWAG, formed in 2014, is a women non-governmental organisation working to improve the economic well-being of rural women, promote sustainable environment through best farming practices and empower women to influence social and political decisions for positive change in traditional and outmoded cultural practices, especially in rural communities in the interest of women and children.