Grasscutter project to boost Upper West farming
A growing grasscutter rearing business is set to receive a further boost under an initiative of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) alternative farming project meant to improve life in the Upper West Region.
Known as the JICA Grassroot Project, it will serve as a major farming activity to boost the nation’s protein supply and also serve as a disincentive for setting bushfires in order to conserve the region’s natural vegetation.
The grasscutter business, which is being championed by the University of Ghana and Kyoto University of Japan, is a new cooperation between the Japanese government and its Ghanaian counterpart towards alleviating poverty in the region.
The ¥50 million ($500,000) project involves the distribution of grasscutters to selected farmers, training and guiding them to increase stock for financial benefits.
But ultimately, it will help to alleviate poverty among the people by providing them with an alternative protein source and as an economic outlet in a region constrained by its unique rainfall and farming season.
Upper West has a single rainfall season which translates into a single farming season all year round.
According to the regional director of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Mr Joseph Faolong, about 80 per cent of the region’s population are engaged in agric-related activities, making the region a primarily agric-based society.
With crops such as maize, millet, sorghum, shea, yam, rice, wheat, and guinea fowl, cattle, goat, sheep, fowl, pig dominating farm produce from the Upper West Region, it has contributed its fair share to the national food requirement.
The project, according to Dr Boniface B. Kayang of the University of Ghana, seeks to enhance the livelihood of the people through local livestock production, reduce hunting practices and their negative effects, encourage the preservation of the vegetation as food for the livestock by discouraging the use of weedicides, create a truly viable source of income for the farmers, and supply the nutritional needs of the people.
Indeed, the domesticated grasscutter comes in handy as an alternative protein source to the hunting in the wild for meat. It, therefore, reduces or even negates the chance for setting fires to trap similar animals in the bush.