Adverse climate conditions, still threat to food security – Economist
Dr. Iddrisu Yahaya, an Economist at the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-SARI), has said the hostile climatic conditions Ghana was experiencing remained threatened the country’s food security.
He said the cause of climate change and its attendant rise in pests and cost of food production was likely to discourage local farmers from into large scale farming.
Dr Yahaya, who was speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Wa, projected the situation could lead to sharp decline in food production that would result in high demand and hikes in food prices in the local market.
“Climate change will lead to food insecurity, since it will affect crop yield and discourage farmers from cultivating on a large scale due to adverse weather conditions,” he said.
“This will result in high demand for food and its resultant high prices in the market”.
Dr Yahaya therefore called for immediate and concerted national action to sustain the country’s agricultural sector to mitigate the impact of hostile climate change on local food production and encouraged farmers to adopt economical farming practices to help cut down production cost and improve their economic status.
In a separate interaction, Dr. Jerry Nboyine, an Entomologist at the CSIR-SARI, noted that climate change had come to stay and called on all to take the necessary actions to improve on their living conditions.
“Climate change has come to stay and if we want our lives to be better as citizens, we have to take actions to adapt to the various variabilities that we are experiencing such as rainfall pattern and high temperatures,” he said.
The Ghana government has introduced a Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme designed to promote growth in food production and created jobs mainly for rural communities with the ultimate aim of ensuring food security.
Over 60,000 youth are expected to be trained and equipped to be part of the programme launched in 2017.
Source: GNA