Mr. Geoffrey Honu, Director of Agriculture in the Upper Manya Krobo district of the Eastern region has advised farmers to desist from the indiscriminate use of weedicides as a way of weeds control. Mr. Honu who was contributing to the Feed the Future Platform on Rite Fm morning ride admitted to the complains that certain chemicals were harmful to the crops and tend to kills them together with the weeds.
He therefore strongly advised that cocoyam farmers use chemicals only during the preparatory stages of their farming activities.
Cocoyam farmers in the Upper Manya Krobo district of the eastern region have poured out their plight of not getting the right weedicides to deal with destructive weeds on their farms. Speaking on Rite FM’s Feed the future platform, Mr. Michael Tetteh, a farmer based in Asesewa in the Eastern region said certain chemicals used for the spraying of weeds were destructive to the cocoyam while weeding directly was also a bad choice either. He has therefore called for the appropriate agro chemicals for their farming activities.
Mr Tetteh said that their main problem was how to get the right chemicals that will kill the weeds but not harm the cocoyam itself.
Also reacting to Mr. Tetteh’s concerns, Mr. Nelson Asiedu, Chief Executive Officer of Annex A. Enterprise said that there are many chemicals on the market that are very effective in killing weeds while not affecting the cocoyam. He said farmers were facing this problem because they were not using the recommended chemicals but rather resorting to the use of harmful chemicals such as atrazine.
Mr. Asiedu therefore advised farmers to desist from using atrazine and other harmful chemicals as a way of checking weeds on their cocoyam farms. He added that farmers relied on these chemicals because they have very little choice and added however that there are new chemicals such as nicosophoran among others which deal directly with the weeds but have very little effect on cocoyam.
Source: ritefmonline.org
