Stimulating the efficiency of the use and integration of organic resources in Ghana’s local economies can benefit a wide range of actors while improving the sustainability of local food systems. The proposed activities build up on the lessons learned from three R4D* projects - the ORM4Soil, "Ghana Compost" and IFWA - and bring cross-sector stakeholders together in a joint effort which is expected to help enhance the use and integration of organic resources in local agricultural systems.
*Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d programme)
The project seeks to accelerate and optimize the integration and use of organic resources in Ghana’s agricultural systems by bringing together the outcomes of three R4D projects: ORM4Soil, and Ghana Compost - both coordinated by FiBL - and the IFWA project, coordinated by CABI Switzerland. As a result of these projects’ activities, a transdisciplinary network of cross-sector change agents emerged, including farmers, reseachers, extension officers, small scale food processors, a private company and an NGO. This network includes partners from sectors that don’t usually collaborate, but that have been brought together by the common interest of using organic resources to improve soil fertility and reap the economic benefits of its inclusion in the local socio-economic systems.
The lessons learned from the selection and testing of different soil fertility management techniques within the ORM4Soil project brought forward promising approaches that have been shown to be of interest for farmers and other stakeholders. The project’s participatory research process in Kade, Ghana, has shown that organic resources that were previously disregarded (e.g. oil palm empty fruit bunch [EFB] and cocoa pods) or unkown by most farmers (e.g. biochar) are capable of significantly improving soil biophysical parameters and crop yields if appropriately managed and used as soil organic inputs.
One of the Innovation platforms (IP) built in the framework of ORM4Soil, the Kade IP, is among the project’s local partners and one of the main beneficiaries of the project, allowing it to go one step further in the implementation of the main messages learned during the lifetime of the ORM4Soil project.
The self-organized Kade IP received 1) equipment to accelerate the ongoing changes, 2) knowledge sharing events and training sessions inside and outside of the intervention area and 3) expansion of the outreach of the main learned lessons to other regions of the country. The 30 farmers that worked directly with the ORM4Soil project in order to test the innovations they selected in participatory way, became convinced of the benefits and spontaneously some of them started training other farmers in these approaches. In order to build up on the already existing energy, sessions of training for trainers are proposed, along with a support program to enable farmers to build up their own autonomous training programs. Such a training program will be locally coordinated by the Kade IP and supported by the University of Ghana and FiBL.
Both the “Ghana compost” and the IFWA projects seeked ways to produce insect larvae as fish and poultry feed from market waste and those resources that are considered of low value. At the same time the substrate used for insect larvae production developed into an organic fertilizer with positive impact on crop growth. While the Kade IP developed ideas for larger scale agricultural production, the insect compost may be interesting for vegetable producers who collaborate with fish and poultry producers in the vicinity of larger agglomerations with access to markets.
The outcomes of the above mentioned projects have attracted the attention of local private companies, and new contacts were established between the projects’ teams and the companies, which aim at using the lessons learned and include them in their business models and operational systems.
Project coordination
