In Tamale, Ghana’s northern metropolis located 433km from the country’s capital, Accra, chicken droppings are being used to improve maize, soybean and rice production.
“The droppings from the farms are used as fertilizer to improve maize and soybean production,” says Osman Abdulai, farm manager of Cudjoe Abimash Poultry Farms, which is part of the African Development Bank’s “Technologies for Transforming African Agriculture in the Savannah” (TTAA-S) Initiative.
This programme aims to convert a portion of the unprepared land into a more commercially viable agricultural land for growing soybeans, maize and rice.
On the occasion of the Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank scheduled for May 23-27, 2022 in Accra, the Bank organised on Saturday, May 21, 2022 in Tamale, a fact-finding trip for journalists at the sites of the series of projects of this initiative whose beneficiaries combine agriculture and livestock.
Cudjoe Abimash Poultry Farms is an integrated site where there are farms with a variety of poultry (layers, broilers, guinea fowl and turkeys), livestock pens (beef, sheep and goats), a cold room and a storage facility for the production of corn, soybeans and rice.
“In poultry production, 70 percent of the expenses are absorbed by the feed. That’s why we are trying to have a circular economy with this whole production chain,” Osman says with a broad smile, as he started showing his visitors the agricultural machinery acquired as part of this project.
“Here, chicken droppings are very important resource for us. We use them to feed our soils,” he continues in a context where fertilizer prices have soared on the international market because of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, stating that “the entire production cycle is profitable.
“The order of eggs is done the day before and it is the traders themselves who come here to fetch the trays of eggs at their expense,” explains the manager of the site who made a “good deal” during the recent festival of Ramadan celebrated in early May.
Tamale, the third largest city in Ghana, has a population of nearly 500,000. It is mostly populated by the Dagomba ethnic group, which speaks Dagbani and is Muslim. The demand for poultry in this region is “skyrocketing,” says Osman Abdulai, who, with his associates, count “6,000 chicks” in the farms established on the site.
The Savannah Area Agricultural Productivity Improvement Project (SAPIP) started the pilot phase of the “Technologies for Transforming African Agriculture in the Savannah” (TTAA-S or TAAT-S) Initiative on 87 hectares in 2018, recalls Mr. Felix Darimaani, the national coordinator of the SAPIP project and the SIP programme.
Following the success of this pilot phase, it was expanded and obtained additional support under the Savannah Investment Program (SIP) both funded by the AfDB. According to Boahen Philip, chief agricultural policy economist at the AfDB, the production system uses conservation agriculture as a mitigation measure against climate variability.
The initiative provides several services, including land use planning support, high quality agricultural inputs and various technical supports. The TAAT-Savannah Agricultural Productivity Improvement Project intervention focused on maize, soybeans and rice.
It generated significant interest in maize and soybean production and laid the groundwork for the launch of the Savannah Investment Programme in 2019 to create more budgetary space to further support the poultry and livestock sector.
This is an approach to leveraging crop and feed production to expand poultry production and processing of agric. products such as feed, chicken and meat, rice and edible oil.
The production area has increased from 87 hectares in 2018 to 13,364 hectares in 2021. The cultivated area is expected to reach the target of 20,000 hectares in 2022, Darimaani estimates. Similarly, he explains that yields for corn have increased from 4.03 million tons to 6.6 million tons and from 1.83 million tons to 2, 35 million tons for soybeans.
In total, 118 farmers, commercial have produced 102,675 million tons of corn and 12,395 million tons of soybeans since 2018.
Since its inception, agro businessmen have supported nearly 30,000 farmers with an average of two hectares per farmer. This is part of efforts to facilitate knowledge transfer to smallholder farmers and enable them to access markets, financial services and mechanization through agro businessmen.
LS/cgd/fss/GIK/APA