Danquah Addo-Yobo
Yara Ghana Limited has concluded its first stakeholder dialogue on fertilizer trials and demonstrations in Accra.
The highly-attended programme sought to deliberate and review field trials and demos of fertilizers produced by Yara and it is aimed at strengthening the quality and depth of input supply and related services to ensure effective agricultural value chains that lead to increase in productivity.
Currently, Yara Ghana has ran 256 farm demonstrations and has over the few years, carved a name for itself as the leading supplier of premium fertilizer products placing the farmer at the center of a consistent knowledge based approach.
They have also reached over 12,000 farmers directly through over 250 farmer meetings and crop clinics.
Explaining issues at the forum, Danquah Addo-Yobo, Managing Director of Yara Ghana Limited affirmed the company’s commitment to ensure farmers had easy access to their fertilizer to ensure quality yields.
He said “we thought it wise to also run trials and demonstrations in local conditions with research institutes, corporate bodies, NGO’s and directly with farmers on the farmer’s land.”
He said Yara Ghana has made available results of the trials and demonstrations on key crops as part of the first year review going into next year to support the decision process for the coming years on target fertilizers for target crops, adding “this will help farmers deliver superior yields.”
Derrick Tuffour-Mills, a West African Agronomist with Yara said the scientific trials were conducted on crops including maize, cocoa, rice and onions and said they were very successful and had been captured in reports.
He said the research findings in Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Northern, Upper West and Upper East regions indicated that application of Yara fertilizers on farms produced higher crop yield in comparison to the traditional control farming system.
“Farmers need to consider three elements in farming business. These are crop knowledge, right fertilizer to use and the tools and skills needed in applying the fertilizer.”
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and USAID/ADVANCE were among institutions with whom Yara Ghana has ran field demonstrations with its crop nutrition fertilizer solutions.
The research institutes, Crop Research Institute (CRI),Oil Palm Research Institute(OPRI),Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana(CRIG) and Savanna Agricultural Research Institute(SARI) were acknowledged for their role in putting Yara’s crop institution fertilizer solution recommendations through scientific trials.
As part of the forum, Yara Ghana Limited, launched a book entitled ‘’Summary of Trials and Demo’’ for farmers.
Dr. Joseph Berchie, a principal research scientist at the Crop Research Institute underscored the importance of fertilizers and urged the farmers to apply the correct amounts of fertilizers on their farms.
He said Ghanaian farmers averagely applied 50kg of fertilizer per hectare compared to their Chinese counterparts who applied 500kg of fertilizer on the same piece of land to get increased crop yield.
He discredited perception that application of fertilizer on crops would negatively affect the health of consumers, saying “if farmers should apply the correct amount of fertilizer on crops it would not have any negative effects.”