Climate smart agriculture for 500 farmers in Ghana

Selected farmers within a surburb in Jukwa community received their first  biochar making training during  this reporting period. They were  taught what is comsidered agricultural and forest wastes which are ueful  resources  that have to be converted to biochar to apply to their farm fileds to improve their crop productivity.  The participants themselves were allowed to idenfity the types of waste available within their farming communities and how they dispossed them off. The farmers realised most ot their waste crop and forest residues that they burn in an open fire to clean up their farms and and communities could be put into better use by converting them to biochar for the improvement of their farm fields . Further elaborations were made  for the farmers to understand what biochar really is and its importance to agriculture and crop productivity. Farmers were led to identify the role of biochar in climate smart agriculturual practices.

The farmers were talso aken through the importance of  biochar kit which is used in making the biochar, its operation, safety measures and how to make a quality biochar. The farmers in a participatory approach were able to successfuly produced their first biochar. This is their first step in the biochar journer that will facilitate their improve farming pracitices  to overcome climate related challenges in thier farming and food security. Thanks to all our generous donors for making this training possible for the beneficiary farmers .

Within the reporting period, smaller focused group training for farmers was conducted for skills transfer requred to know how much biomass needed  to produce  quantity of biochar required for their farm fields as a training needs identified during their first large group training  . With support and handholding training from ASA Initiative team   selected farmers were asssessed to idenfify the quantity of biochar that would be needed for farm field application as a means of knowledge transfer for practical applications.

The small focus group was taken through practical collection of  corn cobs to make biochar and the amount of biochar that can be obained from kilograms of biomass and the total efforts that would be required to make the needed quantity for their demarcated farm fileds. This practical traning serves as a new level of skills in the preparatory process which will assist farmers individully and in smaller groups in planning for biomass amount and quality management and biochar production within farming time limits. The farmers who received the traiing have been  well equiped with the new skills acqured and are producing biochar as an assignment given by ASA Initiative team for their next level of training.

All these efforts have been possible due to the generous donations from our project donors. ASA Initiative Team together with all the beneficiary farmers are grateful to our kind donors.