Farmers in the Upper East Region have been urged to adopt the Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) concept to improve soil quality, restore their lands and help combat climate change.
The concept of FMNR is a low-cost and sustainable land restoration technique that involves community members and farmers deliberately allowing the regrowth of trees and shrubs from felled tree stumps, sprouting root systems, or seeds on farms and grazing lands.
It is aimed at pruning and managing existing trees to regrow to restore the fast-degrading forest and woodland resources without necessarily planting new trees.
According to the manager of the World Vision FMNR project, Samuel Abasiba, the concept relies on indigenous tree species that are adaptable to the local environmental conditions and need no special management.
He revealed this when he spoke to Mark Smith on A1 Radio’s Daybreak Upper East show with a focus on phase 2 of World Vision’s FMNR project being implemented in various communities across the Upper East Region and parts of the Northern and Savana Regions.
Mr. Abasiba noted that the concept ensures food security as it increases crop and livestock production due to its ability to retain nutrients in the soil and also build community resilience.
“When we talk of community resilience, we are talking about communities being able to stand on their feet to face the challenges in terms of health, hunger, and poverty in general, so FMNR is a concept that increases food and livestock production, and if this concept is there to strengthen these areas, then it is inevitably helping them to become resilient to all these challenges.
He advised farmers to stop the practice of cutting down trees and shrubs and burning them for space to farm and adopt the FMNR concept, where they select useful trees and prune them to grow.
He explained that “when you allow some of these trees to grow by pruning them, their leaves fall back to the farm, decompose, and retain the soil nutrients.”
The manager called on other organisations to tap into the idea to help restore degrading lands and battle climate change.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Gilbert Azeem Tiroog|Ghana
