The United States Government, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Feed the Future Ghana Market Systems (MSR) Activity has organized a research pipeline analysis workshop to create a platform for interaction among agricultural researchers, private sector producers and processors, and commodities end users in Northern Ghana.
The first edition of these two-day bi-annual workshops (Pre-Harvest and Pre-Season) was held recently at the Gariba Lodge in Tamale in collaboration with the Savannah Agricultural Research Institute (SARI) and USAID funded Innovation Labs.
Presently, agricultural research institutes, universities, innovation labs and private firms release new technologies to improve agricultural production and post-harvest handling and processing; from novel seed varieties to enhance storage facilities to innovative processing equipment. But these advances will have little impact if they
don’t reach their intended users – Ghana’s farmers. Crop and agricultural researchers work in relative isolation and there is not enough interaction between them and the private sector that are ultimately the ones that will have to adopt and commercialize the research findings and products.
There is a need to have a common platform that increases interactions among stakeholders for the production, commercialization, and use of research products. To that end, the Feed The Future Ghana Market Systems and Resilience Activity is bringing together researchers, seed companies, outgrower businesses, aggregators, agro-input dealers, agro processors, ICT4Ag firms, with officials from the Plant Protection and Regulatory Services
Division of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and others, such as the National Variety Release Committee in Northern Ghana, to work together in assessing and selecting released, but yet to be commercialized varieties of crops from SARI’s research facility for upscaling to smallholder farmers.
These bi-annual forums will inform the MSR Activity to be better positioned to support local research organizations serving northern Ghana, like UDS, SARI and others, to update agriculture-related materials with new technology and market-driven priorities of the agribusiness ecosystem. The regular updates will result in market
and farmer-led development programs that can incorporate resilience and market-based risk mitigation best practices, while promoting regenerative agricultural practices and improved soils fertility resulting in higher sustainable yields for northern Ghana’s farmers.
The Ghana MSR Activity is a five-year USAID funded activity being implemented by ACDI/VOCA to increase inclusive agriculture-led economic growth in northern Ghana. About USAID’s Feed the Future Program
Feed the Future is America’s initiative to combat global hunger. Led by the U.S Agency for International Development, Feed the Future draws on the agricultural, trade, investment, development and policy resources and expertise of multiple U.S federal departments and agencies. The initiative brings together a host of additional partners—from national and local businesses to civil society and the research community—to help countries to tackle the root causes of hunger, poverty and malnutrition for lasting change.
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