Yara Ghana Limited has held its first stakeholder dialogue today on fertilizer trials and demonstrations at La Palm Royal Beach Hotel, Accra. The forum sought to deliberate and review field trials and demos of Yara fertilizers.
Yara Ghana Limited, established in 2007 to strengthen the quality and depth of input supply and related services, along agricultural value chains to increase the productivity of Ghanaian farmers has reached over 12,000 farmers directly through over 250 farmer meetings and crop clinics..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.
Speaking at the forum, the Managing Director of Yara Ghana Limited, Mr. Danquah Addo-Yobo, said:‘’Yara stands for quality, reliability and knowledge sharing with a strong commitment to support the growth and profitability of the farmer”. He added that Yara produces fertilizers of high international standards because there is a lot of global research and test done on Yara products hence, our trials and demonstrations, ‘’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 next year on target fertilizers for target crops. This will help farmers deliver superior yields and the core objective of the Yara trials and demos program. The results are captured in the 2016/2017 Yara report on the ‘’summary of trials and demos’’.
In his submission, Mr. Derrick Tuffour-Mills, the West African agronomist at Yara noted that the scientific trials were conducted on crops like maize, cocoa, rice and onions which was successful according to the report. He added that the research findings in Ashanti, BrongAhafo,Northern, Upper West and Upper East Regions indicated that application of Yara fertilizers on farms produce 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 are among institutions with whom Yara Ghana has run on 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 acknolwedged for their role in putting Yara’s crop institution fertilizer solution recommendations through scientific trails.
As part of the forum, Yara Ghana Limited, launched a book titled ‘’Summary of Trials and Demo’’
Also present at the forum was Dr. Joseph Berchie, a principal research scientist at the Crop Research Institute. Dr. Berchieunderscore the importance of fertilizers and urge the farmers to apply the correct amounts of fertilizers on their crops.
Dr. Joseph Berchie,further said Ghanaian farmers averagelyapplied 50kilogrammes of fertilizer per a hectare of farmland compared to theirChinese counterparts who applied 500kilogrammes of fertilizer on the same pieceof land, which results in increased crop yield. He discredited popular perception thatapplication of fertilizer on crops would negatively affect the health ofconsumers, saying if farmers should apply the correct amount of fertilizer oncrops it would not have any negative effects.
Yara offers a decade of crop nutrition solutions to farmers, which are the reason behind developing different fertilizer recommendations based on crop- specific nutritional needs.
Credit: Yara