Agri National

Adopt Timely Measures to Fight Climate Change – Nurudeen

The Executive Director of the Center for Climate Change and Food Security, Mr. Nurudeen Mohammed has appealed to players in the agricultural sector to adopt prompt measures to minimize the risk that climate change poses to farmers to enhance food security in the country.

Mr. Nurudeen who identified climate change as a “global challenge which Ghana is no exception” said that the negative impact of the phenomenon on the agric sector is very high; and drastic measures are needed to handle the situation to boost farming in the country.

“The country must adopt rain harvesting and drought resistance crops to minimize the risk that climate change poses to farmers to enhance food security in the country,” he stressed. “Climate change is now a global challenge and Ghana is no exception. The adverse impacts of the phenomenon on the agric sector are very high and radical actions are needed to handle the situation to improve farming in the country.”

Mr.  Nurudeen is therefore convinced that the way forward in getting farmers to produce more food is to get farmers to engage in rainwater harvesting.

“In order to get the farmers to produce more food, we are suggesting to the government to start what is known as Rain Water Harvesting because the weather is unpredictable and as a country, it will be to our interest to take advantage when there is enough rain by keeping it safe for later use during droughts,” he stressed.

According to him, government is better off adopting this strategy by harvesting the rainfall to help the country’s farmers.

“Government is better off adopting this strategy by harvesting rain to help the country’s farmers especially at a time like this when climate change is short-changing farmers. This method is helping the farming activity in Israel after they adopted it, Mr. Nurudeen reiterated.

The Executive Director of the Center for Climate Change and Food Security was confident that these measures if taken would help maximize profit and lower the risk involved in farming to withstand the effect of climate change in the near future.

He therefore urged stakeholders to support and educate farmers in the storage of rainwater through the construction of mini dams, channels and pipes as they need experience to embark on such projects.

This, he added must be adopted if the country is serious about its agriculture.

“Agriculture is the backbone of the county’s economy and if the country is serious about agriculture, then there is every need to help put in all efforts to undertake these ventures through the financing of such projects from the government or from donor countries,” he underscored.

He said government can also engage experts to give technical advice to the farmers on how to go about the plans at hand to make it effective. Researchers, he added must equally involve themselves in the process as they can do more to bring out drought resistance crops to help the farmers in these crucial times.

Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, has called on Ghanaian stakeholders in climate change negotiations to unite in their efforts to source for resources to help in the country’s mitigation and adaptation programmes.

He made the call while addressing the Ghanaian delegates at the UN Conference of Parties (COP 23) in Bonn, Germany, he said: ”The idea of attending a COP is to network so that we get resources to change our country. These days when you talk about climate change we are not talking only about EPA or Forestry Commission, but it is about the totality of Ghana’s development”.

He, therefore, called for linkages among the various stakeholders to enable Ghana to get the needed resources to develop the country.

He said the totality of development depended on the environment since climate change affected every aspect of life, especially in agriculture, with rivers drying up, and prolong drought being recorded, particularly in the three regions of the north.

He noted that Ghana needed new technology and capacity building to design proper measures and capacities to build resilience to mitigate climate change.

By Austin Ofori Addo/ritefmonline.org/austinofori.addo@gmail.com

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