Danakpe Adjoa, a 37-year-old smallholder farmer and community volunteer agriculture extension agent (CVAEA) from Upando, Ghana, has been farming groundnuts for the past five years. She never had a good harvest, but things have been different this year, and she is expecting a good crop year.
Groundnut farming is the main farming activity for most women in my community and East Gonja at large, but we toil yields poorly. Fortunately, the 4R project selected groundnut as one of the crops to support, and I was fortunate to be a CVAEA for my community.
As part of the community, the training allowed me to participate in all key project activities such as field days and down streaming training activities to get first-hand information on farming practices.
I was committed to adopting every principle and knowledge learned from the demonstration. So I decided to plant in rows, observing the planting distance using a marked rope from the project and applied my fertilizer during planting. To my excitement, this year, the groundnut is already flowering. Many farmers are happy to see the field results. So my husband and I are taking this learning and practice to our maize field. The aim is that other community members also learn and join me to adopt these farming practices for better yields.
This was a success story from one of the many smallholder farmers targetted by the 4R Nutrient Stewardship project. The project will assist 30,000 smallholder farmer families in having better yields, especially in Maize, Soybeans, Groundnuts, and Rice. The project will cover four parts of Ghana: Kpandai, East Gonja, Nanumba South, and Nanumba North. In addition, the project aims to show how adopting more sustainable farming practices can increase resilience, income, and food security.