Ms. Sherry Ayittey, Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, on Monday advised African farmers to adopt Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) to boost food production.
GMO is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques.
Ms Ayittey said that the negative effects of climate change and land related issues had brought about disparity in the agriculture sector, therefore; farmers needed to change from their way of farming to a more advanced system.
She gave the advice when addressing participants at a four-day workshop on "Taxonomy Needs Assessment of Ghana", in Accra on Monday.
The workshop sought to help review the draft policy on taxonomy, which identifies, describes and communicates about many organisms which remain unknown and are destroyed before they become known.
Taxonomy is a system of arranging animals and plants into natural, related groups based on some factor common to each, as structure, embryology, or biochemistry.
A review of the draft policy would create the necessary environment for a free flow of information about the nation's biodiversity heritage.
The workshop jointly sponsored by government and United Kingdom Department of Environment and Rural Affairs, was attended by 50 participants from research institutions and security agencies in Ghana as well as taxonomy experts from Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Burkina Faso.
Ms. Ayittey noted that Ghana involved stakeholders in consultations and finally had a draft legislative instrument prepared which was passed by Parliament to make it legal for individuals and institutions with proper expertise and capabilities to practice science biotechnology, especially in gene transfer technologies.
She said the nation had put in place adequate measures to ensure that satisfactory preparations were made to implement decisions taken on the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in Biotechnology.
"This involves Ghana's accession to the protocol and preparation of guidelines on safety in biotechnology," she said.
Ms Ayittey said government was ready to consult scientists and experts in biological and applied sciences to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of the nation's biodiversity.
She said that taxonomy formed part of the nation's sustainable development goal being undertaken with passion, because it was a fundamental infrastructure to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of poverty alleviation, combating disease and environmental sustainability.
Ms Ayittey said that the nation needed to develop effective measures to ensure the proper conservation, ownership, sustainable use and preservation of its biological resources.
She pledged government's commitment to incorporate issues relating to taxonomy and bio-diversity into the vision 2030 National Development agenda as well as the Sustainable Development Programme.
Professor Alfred Oteng Yeboah, Lecturer, Faculty of Science, University of Ghana, said before the appropriate taxonomic resources could be made available, there was the need to identify problems and gaps to solve them.
He explained that taxonomy would contribute to wealth creation and poverty reduction because empowering all stakeholders, who used biological resources, would serve as basis for decision-making in conservation and sustainable use of biological and genetic resources.