Strategies to improve soil productivity and disseminate technology information in Ghana

In Ghana, several studies have revealed that one of the major problems in agriculture is declining soil fertility and low productivity. The Integrated Food Crops Systems Project that was initiated in 1994 in the forest savannah transition zone (FSTZ), attributed poor crop yields and their quality, in spite of increasing fertilizer use, to declining soil fertility. According to fanners, soil fertility is perceived to be declining because of accelerated deforestation, frequent bushfires, shortening fallow periods and expansion of cultivation onto marginal lands. In addition, the difficulties associated with providing appropriate (that is, effective, productive and sustainable) agricultural technologies and unsustainable natural resource management practices have increased soil fertility decline and poverty among smallholder fanners. Although, a lot of technical work has gone into the development, testing and evaluation of soil fertility management practices and research has identified simple, low-cost soil conservation and agro-forestry technologies that can improve and maintain the productivity of soils and increase crop yields, these have been poorly disseminated and up-take by smallholder fanners has been limited. Thus, it is in the area of the enormous gap between available knowledge of new echnologies for soil, water and forest resource conservation and actual practice by fanners (i.e. up-take or adoption) that a research gap has been identified. The critical questions that the research would address are: _ Why do good agricultural technologies for soil fertility, forest and water resources improvement, the fruit of costly scientific research, remain unused or adopted only in limited cases? Is adoption and impact of technology all a matter of how information derived fromresearch is disseminated to fanners? _ What must be done to fanners and extension agencies to secure the adoption of particular technologies and improved practices? The difficulties, which provide the context of the research, assume that there has been limited uptake of technology for soil fertility improvement, forest and water conservation because of poor dissemination strategiesThe resources available for agricultural research, technology development, dissemination and transfer for poor people are limited. Farmers are aware of the soil fertility and water constraints to increased crop production but they are constrained in their ability to address them due to financial and tenurial issues and to some extent by financial constraints. There is a potential for the use of soil conservation and agro-forestry technologies to improve soil fertility and increase crop yields, but these are largely unexploited by small holder farmers because they lack knowledge about the new technologies. Resource-poor farmers have a contribution to make to the development,dissemination and transfer of technologies.