‘Let’s promote organic agriculture’

The Country Director of Eco Index Agro Solutions Limited, Mr Daniel Baisie, has called on stakeholders in the agricultural sector to help promote organic agriculture in the country.

 He said with organic agriculture, Ghana would be able to produce enough food crops to feed the entire country and even go commercial with it.

Organic Agriculture is an agricultural system that uses fertilisers of organic origin such as compost manure, green manure  and bone meal and also places emphasis on techniques such as crop rotation.

 Mr Baisie said this in an interview with the Ghanaian Times in Accra on Tuesday.

He said organic agriculture was currently being practiced in Ghana on a large scale which according him was the biggest organic farm in West Africa.

He  said the farm, Golden Exotics located in Akuse in the  Lower ManyaKrobo  District  of the Eastern Region  had  used  organic  farming to grow   banana and some other  crops on large scale.

Mr  Baisie who is also an agronomist  said it was time  Ghana stopped the  importation of some food products such rice, tomatoes, onions adding  that  such food  crops  could be  grown  in Ghana throughout the  year.

 “We are capable of producing various food  crops  here  in Ghana, even right now I know farmers who are  growing strawberries right here in Ghana,  they are also growing apple,  so what is that we cannot grow, even if we are growing these three temperate  crops in Ghana, what other crops can we not grow,” he  stated. 

He said  it was important to  ensure  the practice of sustainable  farming  which  would  not destroy the ecosystem adding that “when  we are not  degrading  and  destroying  our bio diversity, we will be able to have a good season for every food crop.”

Mr Baisie  said in order to have the right  ecosystem  to grow various  food  crops throughout the year,  there was the need to mainstream  some useful  trees  with some other plants  while  growing vegetables  at the same time explaining that, it  would help  regulate the right  temperature for plants to grow.

He  called on governments to  help  stop the importation of some  food  crops  such as  rice, tomatoes onions  and other  food crops that  could be grown in the  country.

 He also urged them to ban the importation and use of   chemicals would have negative impact on the land and food crops.

BY JEMIMA ESINAM KUATSINU