The Navrongo-Bolgatanga Catholic Diocesan Development Organization (NABOCADO) with funding from Germany Catholic Central Agency for Development has organized an innovation fair for farmers in the Bongo district in the Upper East Region to promote local innovation for food and nutrition security.
Beneficiary farmers displayed innovations such as the use of herbs for the treatment of African swine fever and the preservation and storage of cereals, using saltpetre and tamarind fruit extract to improve shea butter quality, preparation of liquid fertilizer from cow and donkey dung and processing sweet potato into flour.
There were shea butter soap, creams, and oils from economic trees among others.
The Project Coordinator of Proli-FaNS at ACDEP Ghana, Joseph Nchor said the project aims at promoting and supporting farmers to innovate and use technologies to improve nutrition and food security across Africa.
“Most at times we impose technologies on farmers which are not sustainable in the long run because they don’t come from the farmer situation and at the end they fail. So, this project seeks to promote farmers’ own technologies developed to improve nutrition and food security and working to further develop them”.
He reiterated that the project was focused on women as a means to address the development gap between men and women in the area.
NABOCADO Bongo manager Dominic Avea said the 3-year project has achieved its objectives at increasing incomes of women than before with high demand for Shea butter and sweet potato flour.
He added that malnutrition among children has reduced and the use of animal droppings to produce liquid fertilizer has become an alternative source of manure for farmers who cannot afford to buy fertilizers.
Proli-FaNS aims to strengthen the innovation capacity of rural communities, particularly of women, and to increase the level of local resilience to change.
It uses farmer-led joint participatory innovation development approach to involve researchers, extension agents in a combined effort to achieve food and nutrition security.
The project that began in August 2016, will end in July 2019.
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By: /citinewsroom.com/Ghana
