Sixty peasant farmers in the Awutu/Senya District of the Central Region, have been schooled on global warming and its negative effects on agricultural activities.
They were also educated on alternative sources of livelihood such as mushroom and snail farming, beekeeping and grasscutter rearing.
Awutu-Adawukwa-based Youth As A Mission Development Association (YAAMDA), organized a two-day intensive training workshop for the
farmers drawn from Awutu-Adawukwa, Osae-Krodua, Offadjator, Akufful-Krodua and Honi.
Mr Daniel Domie, Gomoa-East District Coordinator of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), and Mr Opoku Amoakohene of
the Amoakohene Mushroom Products Biodiversity Training Centre, Ashanti-Bekwae, were the resource persons for the workshop.
According to Mr Daniel Bakah, Executive Director of the Association, the workshop was funded by the New England Bio-labs Foundation (NEBF), a non-governmental organization
He said the objective of the Association was to assist farmers in the area to acquire adequate knowledge on climate change and the danger it poses to forest conservation and agricultural activities on which the farmers depend for their livelihood.
Mr Bakah expressed the optimism that the knowledge they had gained would help them tremendously, saying that they would not lean
heavily on the shifting cultivation system of farming because it accounted for about 80 per cent of the depletion of both virgin and secondary forests in the country.
Mr Domie warned farmers to refrain from cutting trees when preparing lands for agricultural purposes. He added that they must
stop burning weeds on their farmlands because it was against modern farming practices.
He emphasized that the increasing global warming posed a serious threat not only to agricultural programmes, but also to the very
existence of the entire human race.
“It is the cardinal responsibility of every citizen including farmers to help to protect the country’s numerous water resources especially river bodies, in order to sustain these important natural resources for the good of present and future generations,” Mr Domie further counseled.
Mr Amoakohene charged the beneficiary farmers to spread the good news to their colleagues, who did not take part in the workshop so that it would have greater impact on the national forests conservation initiatives.
According to Mr Amoakohene, the trainees could do this by freely imparting the knowledge they had acquired to others so that the number
of farmers in the area, who depended on forest resources for their livelihood would reduce drastically in no time.
He said that mushroom farming, snail, grasscutter rearing and beekeeping ventures, if effectively practiced and managed, could earn
them huge economic returns annually to cater for their livelihood domestically.
A representative of the participants thanked the Youth Association and the New England Bio-labs Foundation for making the training a reality and promised that they would make good use of the knowledge they had gained.