Government must invest more in climate smart agriculture – CEO ASPASSION Farms

The Chief Executive Officer of ASPASSION Farms, Farmer Robben Asare is asking government to invest more in climate smart agriculture which will help drive increased productivity, enhanced resilience and reduced emissions across the country.

Farmer Asare explained that climate-smart agriculture is an integrated approach to managing landscapes, cropland, livestock, forests and fisheries that address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change.

He adds that the growing global population and changing diets are driving up the high demand for food.

Farmer Asare made these remarks in an interview with this reporter on Ghana’s Agricultural Sector and how Climate Smart Agriculture can help increase production.

He said the discussion had been that the youth could find employment in Agriculture but we are not embracing new innovations, the very sector that could employ majority of the youth of Ghana.

“Production is struggling to keep up as crop yields are going down across the continent, ocean health declines, and natural resources including soils, water, and biodiversity are stretched dangerously thin.

"A 2020 report by the United Nations found that nearly 690 million people of the global population are hungry. The food security challenge will only become more difficult, as the world will need to produce about 70 percent more food by 2050 to feed an estimated 9 billion people,” he indicated.

According to him, the challenge is intensified by agriculture’s extreme vulnerability to climate change.

“Climate change’s negative impacts are already being felt, in the form of increasing temperatures, weather variability, shifting agroecosystem boundaries, invasive crops and pests, and more frequent extreme weather events.

"On farms, climate change is reducing crop yields, the nutritional quality of major cereals, and lowering livestock productivity.

"Substantial investments in adaptation will be required to maintain current yields and to achieve production and food quality increases to meet demand in Ghana and across the continent,” he indicated.

Farmer Asare explained that while there is the need to build on existing knowledge, technologies, and principles of sustainable agriculture, CSA is distinct in several ways.

“We all know that CSA systematically considers the synergies and tradeoffs that exist between productivity, adaptation and mitigation.

"CSA aims to capture new funding opportunities to close the deficit in investment,” the 2019 national best Agroforestry farmer emphasised.