The Deputy Minister of agriculture Dr. Sagre Bambangi has led a delegation from the Savannah Zone Agricultural Productivity Improvement Project (SAPIP) and other stakeholders to embark on a two-day field visit to some project sites in the northern region.
The objective of the monitoring visit is to assess the performance of the cutting-edge technologies being promoted under conservation agriculture for up-scaling in the future.
The two day tour took the team to five maize farms and five soybean farms in the Mion, Savelugu and West Mamprusi districts.
The deputy agric minister Dr. Sagre Bambangi in an interaction with the media said it was about time collective efforts are galvanized to promote agriculture.
He said the world is in an era where agriculture must be seen as a business venture and locals must therefore see the need for serious investments in the sector including sending their wards to school to study agriculture.
Project coordinator of SAPIP Felix N. Darimaani explained that, the project is under the Africa Development Bank (AFDB) Feed Africa Strategic initiative which seeks to transform agriculture in Africa into a competitive and inclusive agribusiness sector.
The Africa Development Bank (AFDB) is therefore implementing the technologies for Africa agricultural Transformation – Savannah (TAAT-S) to facilitate dialogue between public institutions, private investors, researchers, technology providers and other relevant actors in the Agric sector.
The TAAT-S pilot was launched in Ghana in 2017 with the aim of testing and demonstrating at scale, viable commercial conservation agriculture systems in the savannah for the production of maize-soybean-livestock value chains.
In the 2018 cropping season, SAPIP carried out four demonstrations with farmers on a land area of about 87 hectors for both maize and soybean on conservation agriculture for the production of maize and soybean.
