Maintain a balance between agriculture and biodiversity-Prof Oteng-Yeboah

Professor Alfred A. Oteng-Yeboah, Chairman, National Biodiversity Committee, has called on Ghanaians to adopt comprehensive measures towards increased agriculture production to ensure food security.
He, however, suggested a balance between agricultural practices, such as land tillage and biodiversity conservation, which involved sustainable use of natural landscape.
A statement signed by Prof. Oteng-Yeboah and released to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), on Wednesday, said; “If we lose this balance and turn all our vital landscape into agricultural fields, the future prosperity in using and benefiting from our wild genetic variability as a heritage and the ecosystem services derived from it would be lost to the generation after us, and the inter-generational equity we seek for the future of this nation will be lost forever.”
He explained that agriculture had benefited more from the relationship between biodiversity and agriculture in various ways, including the search for wild relatives of crops to develop resistant varieties to counter diseases and pests.
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah said with increasing advances in biotechnology, especially in genetic engineering, biodiversity continues to offer to agriculture a large pool of genes.
These, he said, included basic DNA complements of cells, to enrich genetic variability in crop production and to enable parts or whole of novel organisms to be created for research purposes and crop productivity.
He said, “ additionally, biodiversity, in the sense of ecosystems, continue to provide such services as pollination, effective ambient climatic conditions and nutrient and water cycling for crop production.”
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah said the linkages had not always been beneficial while agriculture as an economic and livelihood activity had led to “extensive land use and land use cover change.”
He said, this could further result in biodiversity loss in terms of ecosystems, populations, species and their genetic composition, some components of biodiversity, especially disease causative micro-organisms and their vectors, and also affected agriculture in its products in the field and in storage.
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah said even though loss of biodiversity might not be noticed immediately, cumulatively, it would surface in the deficit account in ecosystem services provision in the next generational period.
He said, “when there is loss of agricultural products through disease or pests or there is an episode of crop failure in a particular cropping season, the survival of the people is at stake because there is no food security.”

Prof. Oteng-Yeboah said; “Biodiversity and Agriculture,” the theme for this year's International Biodiversity Day, was carefully selected to reflect current world food insecurity.
He said the event in Ghana would take place at Domiabra in the Greater Accra Region, adding that, the thought of the theme would provide opportunity for participants to find out why the world was experiencing the current mounting food prices following fuel price hikes.
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah indicated that the forum would also call for the integration of biodiversity issues, especially the ecosystem services for human development
He said; “The current trends in agricultural production are in the application of biotechnology. While some opt for the simple techniques of tissue culture fore the multiplication of planting materials, which contain the phenotypic characteristics, others opt for the techniques in which parts or whole of a novel organism is produced through genetic manipulations.
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah said the genetic manipulation approach has been the hallmark of the gene revolution, and many biotech companies that emerged in developed countries were championing this technology.
He said that, countries intending to embrace the technology have been encouraged to develop guidelines on bio-safety in biotechnology application.
The biodiversity expert gave the hint that Ghana has developed the guidelines but was yet to be legalized by the Ghanaian Parliament.
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah noted that it was probably wise for Ghana to be dragging her feet because of the fear of unknown consequences, taking a cue from the introduction of DDT as an insecticide to control insect and pests.
He said; “The argument of many people who speak against the production of genetically modified organisms is the unknown behaviour of the introduced genes in an uncontrolled situation such as when the gene accidentally enters the wild and gets to the closest relative of the crop through pollen transfer by such agents as animals and wind or even water and there is a disaster.”
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah said the ability to apply the technology in cleaning the environment was not within the reach of Ghana and the damage to the environment in particular of the gene pool would be unimaginable and incalculable adding “ So the question is why taking such expensive risks on human heritage? “
He said the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), sought to address key aspects of a functional, sustainable food production system on the continent, to break the cycles of hunger and poverty.
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah explained that the alliance made reference to better and appropriate seeds, responsible use of soil nutrients and better management practices, access to water and efficient use of water.

Prof. Oteng-Yeboah said focus should be on better agricultural input and output markets, local networks of agricultural education, search for the African farmer knowledge, government policies that support small-scale farmers, and monitoring and evaluation of the alliance approach for uptake and adoption in implementation.
He said this approach would succeed because agriculture is to be practiced on an ecosystem approach.
Prof.. Oteng-Yeboah explained that the measure involved orderly manipulation of the immediate environment which is inclusive of humans, biodiversity and the inanimate geo-physico-chemical surroundings including soils, water and climate.
He said; “This approach makes reference to the African traditional agricultural knowledge which must be incorporated into the new and modern technologies that are being developed by our researchers.”
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah said there was no need to continue clearing more lands for agriculture and the basic problem of soil fertility must be tackled so that the same land could be cultivated over and over again for crop production.
He cautioned about falling into the trap of converting any land particularly for bio-fuel production because of the assumed profits from it saying, “It should not be just any land that is available that we should use for this venture.”
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah said there was the need to control the use of edible sugars and oils produced from agricultural fields for bio-fuel production.
He said in case any country wanted to engaged in this activity and in order not to destroy biodiversity unnecessarily and further compound the problem of food insecurity, issues in bio-fuel production should be addressed
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah said there was the need to understand the full life cycle of first generation feed stocks for bio-fuel production.
He called for risk analysis on issues including food security, human wellbeing, social cohesion, biodiversity loss, ecosystem services especially water, Green House Gas emissions and pollution in bio-fuel production.
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah advised; “There is need to consider searching for and using only non-edible oils such as from Jatropha for bio-fuel production.”
He suggested an examination of the use of domestic and municipal waste as well as waste wood sources like saw dust for bio-fuel production.
Prof. Oteng-Yeboah advocated the growing of algae on a large scale for their cellulose as source for carbohydrate to produce alcohol for bio-fuel.
He called for the exploration of cheaper sources of renewable energy such as geothermal, hydro, solar, tidal, wave and wind to power automobiles and generate electricity to take the focus away from bio-fuels.