U.S.-Educated Plant Expert Teaches Ghana's Farmers

By Karen Calabria
Special Correspondent

New York - "In Ghana, we import a lot of our food. There's absolutely no reason for that," horticulturist Mildred Osei Kwarteng says.

That's been the guiding principle behind Kwarteng's career. Growing up in Kumasi, the country's second-largest city, she spent a great deal of time working on her grandmother's small farm in a neighboring village. School holidays spent sowing and harvesting crops made Kwarteng think she didn't want to be a farmer. But despite that attitude, agriculture stayed with her. In the end, she says, she decided she wanted to help Ghanaian farmers figure out how they were going to feed Ghana's people.

Kwarteng, 30, has spent the last decade working as a development officer at the agriculture ministry in Kumasi. There, she trains agricultural extension agents and small-farm owners to use new techniques that are both environmentally sound and financially powerful. Kwarteng sees the training as vital to Ghana's well-being, since agriculture accounts for 35 percent of the country's gross domestic product and more than half of the work force is involved in the industry.

"Years ago, farmers knew good farming techniques. But that knowledge has been lost," Kwarteng said. "Now [farmers] rely too much on agrochemicals - insecticides, fungicides, fertilizers." The overuse and misapplication of those chemicals has degraded the soil, contaminated the water supply and posed health risks. Couple this with the sprawling growth of urban areas, and Ghanaians face a reduced "amount and quality of land that's even available for farming." (To begin with, only 18 percent of the land is arable.) To address these issues, Kwarteng applied for a Norman E. Borlaug fellowship. She was accepted and, in 2008, headed to the University of Kentucky, where she studied pesticide use and irrigation in urban farming zones.

"I learned proper use of pesticides, better irrigation methods and natural methods of mining nutrients from the soil. In Ghana, we've started with small, simple changes, like cover cropping. By planting alfalfa or clover in addition to the primary crops, farmers can replenish the soil, cut chemical costs and even reduce work hours, requiring farmers to till less."

"These models have allowed us to extend technology to poor rural farmers, reduce their cost, increase their yield and secure good prices for their crops," Kwarteng said. "We're increasing sufficiency, reducing poverty and improving quality of life." The new methods have been successful on a small scale, but Kwarteng isn't about to stop there. "Now we have to educate more people," she said.

Source: U.S. Department of State