Cocoa farmers have been advised to plant plantain suckers along cocoa seedlings to provide shade for the survival of cocoa seedlings amid unfavourable climate conditions. The plantain suckers, according to Dr Wiston Asante, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Silviculture and Forest Management, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, would help reduce heating temperature and provide moisture for the benefit of the cocoa seedlings. He gave the advice in a presentation at a workshop on climate change for media practitioners at Koforidua in the Eastern Region on Friday. The event was organised by the Feed the Future Ghana Policy LINK Activity in collaboration with the Environmental Protection Agency. Dr Asante said cocoa waa highly sensitive to changes in climate parameters from hours of sunlight exposure, rainfall and temperature. ‘Water and temperature stress in cocoa farms will ultimately trigger and further drive challenges in managing agronomic and other on-farm complexities, ‘ he statee Dr Asante observed that many farmers were unable to adapt climate-smart practices due to its cost implications and. said a reduction in yields had dire consequences on the livelihoods of cocoa farmers as 70-100 per cent of cocoa farmers generated their annual household income from cocoa. Ghana is the world’s second largest producer of cocoa. In the2020/2021 season, the country produced a record 1.033 million tonnes of beans. However, in recent years, there have been concerns that yields could plummet drastically due to the adverse impact of climate change on temperature and rainfall pattern. The cocoa industry employs about 3.2 million people along its commodity chain and accounts for about 25 per cent of foreign exchange earnings. Mr Kwabena Asubonteng, Lecturer at the Department Of Geo-Information Sciences at the Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, University for Development Studies, said agriculture and urban expansion, deforestation, and pollution were among the human-induced causes of land degradation in the country. He said existing laws and policies that were intended to restrict certain human activities must be enforced to help reduce the spate of land degradation. Mr Asubonteng mentioned the planting of trees, selective logging, removal of matured trees, controlled burning of forest, and monitoring for timely response to stress as among the practices that could be adopted to deal with forest loss. The two-day training is to enhance the capacity of media practitioners on climate change so they could educate the public on activities that aggravate climate impacts and advocate the adoption of environmentally sustainable practices. The workshop is also expected to broaden the knowledge of participants on key climate change policies, strategies, and plans, as well as climate change themes such as climate smart agriculture, sustainable land and forest management, and sustainable/renewable energy systems. Mr Gerald Forkuor, Climate Change Lead at Policy LINK, urged journalists to put the spotlight on climate-smart interventions and technologies deployed by ordinary farmers to help scale up those interventions to support resilience against climate change.
Source: Ghana News Agency