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CABI partners Ghana to build a stronger plant health system

By GNA
Opinion CABI partners Ghana to build a stronger plant health system
OCT 9, 2015 LISTEN

Accra, Oct. 9, GNA-In the world all over, an estimated 30 to 40 per cent of crops are lost each year to pests and reducing the phenomena by just one per cent could feed millions of people.

Meanwhile, over a third of the world's population set to reach nine billion by 2050 is supported by 500 million smallholder farmers, therefore, supporting farmers in their fight against pests is a global food security emergency.

Ghana's crop production sub-sector generates 32 per cent of the country's Gross Domestic Product and so intensifying crop production is essential for the country's economic growth.

For this to succeed, the country has to confront the threat from pests and diseases, which are estimated to be responsible for about 30 per cent of the annual crop yield losses.

Data and plant health information in Ghana remains limited and scattered across multiple players. Most players are working independently due to poor coordination by the mandated institutions, which often has inadequate infrastructure, financial and technical resources to perform their role.

The low extension staff to farmer ratio, which stands at one extension officer to 1300 to 1500 farmers, instead of the FAO's approved ratio of one officer to 500 farmers coupled with knowledge gaps of the few extension staff available, in plant health problems and their management remains a hindrance to effective plant health service delivery.

Within the past 30 years, the country experienced introduction of pests and diseases of economic importance. Notable among them are the fruit fly, mango bacterial spot, papaya mealy bug, cassava and mango mealy bugs.

Today, the country continues to remain vulnerable to invasion by exotic pests and diseases and that is why we need to equip smallholder farmers with the knowledge to fight pests and diseases.

The Plantwise initiative, a CABI-led programme, has therefore positioned itself to provide the knowledge and technical support for Ghanaian farmers.

The global Plantwise initiative, led by CABI, was first launched in Ghana in 2012 with plant clinics in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions. After the clinics' early success providing timely plant health advice to farmers, operations were scaled-up to Northern, Eastern and Volta regions.

There was a total of 72 established clinics with 66 active clinics now running in 39 districts across five of the 10 regions. It is hoped that, in the long run, the programme would cover all the 10 regions and the 230 districts nationwide.

National and deputy coordinators and a national data manager appointed from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) play a key role in the supervision of the programme in the country.

Plantwise is overseen by a national steering committee made up of top officials from across the national plant health system.

The Plantwise plant clinics provide a meeting place for trained plant health advisors, known as plant doctors, and the farmers they aim to serve.

The idea behind plant clinic comes from human health clinics where people visit for preventive and curative care. Likewise, farmers could go to plant clinics with their diseased plants samples.

Plant clinics are operated by local extension officers who have been trained by Plantwise in the relevant techniques and skills to run a plant clinic.

They provide diagnosis and advice on any problem and when they need additional help, plantwise connects them with new knowledge resources, which are mostly extension reference material in the form of factsheets, photosheets and Green and Yellow Lists from the knowledge bank.

The knowledge bank platform provides additional links to national research centres, which could provide answers.

Plant clinics are forums for sharing knowledge about farming within local communities- a gateway where policy makers could collect important data to inform research and decision-making, and where farmers could consult an objective advisor on how to manage their plant health problems.

To help ensure best-practice advice is always given, Plantwise has introduced a set of policies to guide the implementation of plant clinics around the world including Ghana.

The past three years have seen CABI making excellent progress in Ghana towards its long-term vision of being the 'go to' place for information on agriculture.

Through Plantwise, CABI working in partnership with the Plant Protection and Regulatory Services Directorate (PPRSD) of MoFA and other stakeholders has delivered more information, with greater impact, to various farmers.

By helping farmers trade more of what they sow, Plantwise has continued to be a core focus of many of CABI's projects. Better plant health systems and common standards of pest risk analysis are important steps in removing trade barriers to help farmers' access national, regional or international markets that would pay for the added quality.

Various areas of concern are being addressed through a series of actions in addition to providing jobs for Ghanaians.

Building capacity for extension services.
Basic training of plant doctors consists of two to three day modules training, one focusing on pest diagnosis and remedies and managing plant clinics, and the second on providing good advice.

Trainers of trainers and subject matter specialists are taken through the same process as plant doctors, before serving as trainers and supervisors of plant doctors. Subject matter specialists, in particular researchers, are trained in the elaboration of fact sheets and Pest Management Decision Guides.

This module also pays attention to writing extension messages aimed at farmers on the basis of already elaborated Pest Management Decision Guides.

As of end of July, the capacity building component of the programme has helped to train about 114 plant doctors from MoFA staff, 23 from Agextension Africa and 10 from ADRA.

''Being a plant doctor is so good, it's like when a human doctor saves someone's child. In the same way when you save a farmer's plant you feel proud. Plantwise provides an opportunity for agricultural development in Ghana which is unique- bringing everyone together to help farmers," says Steven Aidoo, plant doctor in the Ashanti Region.

In doing so, the various trainings including data management, monitoring plant clinic performance, organising plant health rallies, harmonisation of modules, stakeholders forums and workshops, have been successful in increasing the relevance of extension and the motivation of extension agents and their supervisors. But the best way to foster the practice is to integrate it into the national educational system.

Influencing Colleges and University Curricula
CABI met last year in Tamale with the Faculty of Agribusiness and Communication Science of the University for Development Studies (UDS) to review its curriculum to make the programmes run at the Faculty meaningful to the corporate world.

As a result, UDS has agreed to include the Plantwise training modules on how to become a plant doctor in their curriculum for the Agri-Business and communication studies faculty, which also produces extension agents. Among the many changes made was transforming a course in Entomology to Crop Protection because there was no other course on Plant Pathology at the Faculty.

'One of the key issues we want to address with these reforms is the whole plant health system and we are aware that CABI has a worldwide expertise in this area. Besides, as a University, we are also interested in the publishing expertise of CABI for our own future publications. Generally speaking, we are conscious of the pithy talks going around that university graduates are not properly prepared to fit into the job market; that is why we identified CABI, among other stakeholders, as one of the major stakeholders to make valuable input into our curricula so as to produce employable and entrepreneurial graduates,'' Dr Richard Nartey Yeboah, Head of the Department of Agribusiness Management and Finance, UDS said.

Efforts are also in progress to get similar inputs into the curricula of Agricultural Colleges of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

Mrs Milly Kyofa-Boamah, Director PPRSD said: 'There is an increasing demand to expand the plant health clinics to other areas and it is hoped that each district in the country will have plant health clinic(s) to provide services needed to support farmers.

'This calls for an increase in the number of extension agents trained as plant doctors. We are aware that all the agriculture colleges of the ministry are under your supervision. We need to introduce plant doctor training modules in the agricultural colleges and universities.'

'The CABI-led plant clinic approach is more efficient in the sense that it saves money and time by targeting all the layers of the plant health system at the same time.

Mentoring young scientists
In the meantime, CABI is also mentoring interns, masters and PhD students in various areas of expertise ranging from entomology, Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards to finance and development studies.

CABI and its partners sponsored for example a Masters student working on the Management of Prostephanus Truncatus using Beauveria bassiana to present her findings at the International Annual Congress on Invertebrates Pathology and Microbial Control held in Germany in August 2014.

'This Congress has helped me in different ways. I was able to network with scientists from diverse backgrounds and learn about new technologies on microbiological control. At the Congress too, I presented the findings of the research to more than 600 participants. I am excited that many of them are interested in working with me and I am likely to have a scholarship for a PhD thesis,'' says Miss Mavis Agyeiwaa Acheampong, MPhil, Crop Science (Plant Pathology) Department, University of Ghana.

Changing behaviours
Meanwhile, the Plantwise initiative has started bearing fruit and in the Afigya Kwabre District in the Ashanti Region, the system complements well extension delivery.

Farmers do not purchase chemicals without consulting Plant doctors anymore and Agriculture Extension Officers depend on plant clinic recommendations for their farmers.

Rice farmers at Adukro, Tetrem and Kyekyewere acknowledged the fact that their rice blast diseases problems which collapsed rice production in the district have been managed through plant clinic activities.

Citrus farmers have revived their abandoned citrus farms due to angular leaf and fruits thanks to the advice they have received from the clinics.

Vegetable farmers who attended plant clinic last year applauded the system. A farmer, Issifu Abdallah had a very good yield (95 per cent yield) and won the best district vegetable farmer (Tomato), when he attended Ankaase clinic.

The plant clinic initiative is therefore gradually bridging the gap between the various actors in the plant health system. The initiative if well integrated into the agricultural service delivery system at all levels would contribute greatly in reducing crop losses and in achieving food security in the country.

Once fully established, it is hoped that the Plantwise system would be managed and funded either by the government or through public-private partnerships after the 2020 deadline.

Way forward
For ownership and sustainability of its activities by stakeholders and beneficiaries, CABI is working through Plantwise with partners to help Ghana build an integrated and stronger plant health system for resilient agricultural development.

The relationship with the Government had flourished through partnerships with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in various development projects as well as key partners including NGOs like ECASARD and ADRA.

The programme approach, is based on the reinforcing of plant health systems; the provision of advice to farmers through Plant Clinics; and the strengthening an inherent monitoring and evaluation system that enables a continual adaptation of the initiative to country circumstances through deployment of lessons learnt.

It also looks at the supply of on-line plant health information through a Knowledge Bank.

Plantwise therefore, merits full support from other donors to add to the current financial support from the European Union.

The systematic use of existing extension systems to provide plant health advice would involve a major investment in training non-plant doctor extension staff as junior plant doctors or plant nurses.

Donors are also advised to support such investment as it would be key to reaching the large numbers of farmers intended to benefit from the programme nationwide.

'The CABI-led plant clinics approach is very efficient in the sense that it saves money and time by targeting all the layers of the plant health system at the same time.

'I really find it original. This approach has a huge potential and can yield miracles if properly managed; and I personally believe that CABI, FAO and other partners should find ways to sustain it'', Mr Bukar Tijani, FAO Assistant Director General and Regional Representative for Africa has said.

In Ghana, CABI also addresses other priority issues such as strengthening the horticulture sector with sustainable sanitary and phytosanitary standards for better public health and access to markets; contributing increased livestock productivity through the use of insect protein as a protein source for poultry and fish feed from waste products; reducing post-harvest losses by battling the Larger Grain Borer and other storage insects; and many more services in agricultural knowledge management.

CABI continues to take lessons learned into account and update its vision with the insights and experience it has gained all along the way.

CABI is a not for profit international organisation with a mandate originating from 48 member countries, delivering high impact development projects with world class information skills and a solid science base.

Its core aim is to serve member countries and to remain as a not-for-profit international organisation owned by them. It also focuses to improve lives by solving problems in agriculture and the environment.

'We use our knowledge to help generations of farmers to feed themselves, their families and their communities and to sustain the environment in which they live. We produce world class products and information services for all our customers - farmers, researchers, governments and the private sector.

'They use the knowledge they gain from us and apply their own expertise to help themselves and others grow better, lose less, feed more,' Dr Victor Attuquaye Clottey, Regional Co-ordinator of CABI West Africa, has said.

A GNA feature by Lydia Asamoah

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