Erratic rainfall affecting UER farmers

Erratic rainfall has is making farmers switch to growing crops that take shorter time to harvest

Farmers living along the White Volta basin at Gentiga Number 1 and 2 in the Bawku Municipality in the Upper East Region are frantically battling to sustain their farms, the only source of their livelihood.

This is due to the effects of erratic rainfall patterns and the dryness of the only water source for their farm­ing and household activity, leading to food insecurity in the area.

Osman Adam, a 26-year-old farmer, who is among hundreds of small-scale farmers who depend on rainfall to start this year’s farming, is stranded between taking the risk to sow his crops or not.

He said unpredictable weather patterns in rainfall were causing havoc for many of the farmers in the area, as sowing and harvesting periods were severely affected.

Mr. Adam said other farmers have abandoned plans to cultivate their lands because of the same challenges they faced in previous years, resulting in poor harvest.

“Changing rain and weather pat­terns have led the crops to be sown and harvested late, which often re­sults in crop failure, undermining farm yields, reducing food availability, and lowering income,” he added.

As you can see, the White Volta ba­sin, the only source of water we relied heavily on for dry season farming as well as their household activity, has dried up, leaving the crops stunted and making life unbearable.

Hawa Mammah, a 71-year-old farmer and mother of seven children, said she had never experienced such weather change since she began to practice subsistence farming on her one acre of land.

She said previously, at this time of the season, they used to plant and harvest maize, pepper, millet, and sorghum, “but now the rains are com­ing no more, and this is causing a lot of hunger.”

“Now, it is extremely dry, and hun­ger will wipe all of us out if it contin­ues like this,” she said.

She also said that the situation had discouraged the youth from going into farming. “Additionally, I have seen some old farmers give up plant­ing crops because it is not worth the expense.”

Alhaji Zakaria Fuseini, the Upper East Regional Director of Agriculture, confirmed the situation, saying that for the past years, farmers in the region had been recording low yields due to changes in the rainfall pat­terns.

“We keep receiving complaints from farmers about drought and delays in rainfall, which are affecting their farming as well as livelihoods,” he said.

He added that rainfall was a huge contributor to farming in the north­ern part of the country, especially for small-scale farmers, who solely relied on it for their activities.

Alhaji Fuseini said erratic rains have pushed farmers to switch to grow­ing crops that take shorter time to harvest.

He said because of lack of aware­ness about climate change, many farmers have not yet shifted to alter­native crops on a large scale.

Alhaji Fuiseni said “the Agric De­partment is doing its best to educate the farmers about climate change as well as introduce climate-smart seeds that can withstand the climate conditions.”

He, therefore, called on farmers to change their traditional way of farm­ing and rely on the education and im­proved climate-smart seed introduced by the Agriculture Department.

From Geoffrey Buta, Gentiga. Upper East Region.