The Research for Development Innovation Agriculture and Learning (ReDIAL) projects which is aimed at supporting small holder grain and cereal farmers in the country to boost food production, has ended.
The four-year project, co-funded by the European Union (EU) under the DeSira initiative ReDIAL was implemented in Ghana’s major food producing zones to help address post-harvest losses in the grain and cereal farming sector.
The beneficiary food producing zones are Techiman in the Bono East Municipal, Ejura in the Ejura Sekyedumase District of the Ashanti Region, Yendi in the Northern Region, Sefwi Wiawso in the Western North Region and Donkorkrom in the Kwahu Afram Plains North District of the Eastern Region.
As part of the project, ReDIAL focused on providing innovative agricultural solutions to small holder grains and cereal farmers, particularly the marginalised, in Ghana’s major food producing zones.
The project, over the implementation period introduced the multi crop threshers to over (11500) small holder farmers in the five project zones, threshing 330,200 kilograms of high-quality grains for almost 1000 farmers (i.e. maize, cowpea, rice and beans) at no cost to them.
This initiative significantly contributed to reduction in post-harvest grain losses in these zones for small holder and marginalised farmers and eliminated the laborious manual threshing which in many cases involved children with poor quality output.
Beneficiary farmers were also introduced to Farm Sense Soil Testing technology, a technology which instantly measured the fertility status of a farmer’s land cleared for cultivation, and provides figures on the status of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium levels.
The coordinator of the ReDIAL project and Executive Director of Friends of the Nation, Donkris Mevuta, emphasised that the introduction and testing of FarmSense technology yielded a critical insight.
“As the project closes out, a total of GH¢125, 000 worth of assets are being handed over to post ReDIAL management committees in each of the five project zones,” Mevuta stated.
The assets, he stated include 10 multicrop threshers, (15) portable farm sense soil testing kits, and five public address systems.
ReDIAL was implemented by a consortium of five partners, made up of Friends of the Nation as the lead partner, Tropenbos Ghana, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Sesi Technologies and SAYeTECH.