Building resilience against climate change: Need to adopt GM technology
By Philip Tengzu
Mr. Doho Sumaila, a commercial farmer in the Sissala East Municipality of the Upper West Region, lost about 476 hectares (1190 acres) of his farm to two months of drought that wreaked havoc in Northern Ghana in the 2024 cropping season.
That translated to about GHȻ2,308,600.00 loss to Mr. Sumaila, comprising cost of ploughing, planting, hybrid seeds and chemicals among others, because of the changing climatic condition currently experienced in the region, Ghana and globally.
Mr. Sumaila said due to the drought, he had to replough and replant the 1190 acres, representing about 70 per cent of his 1,700-acre farm.
Salifu Borsu, also a farmer from Dimajan, a community in the Sissala East Municipality, said the dry spell severely affected his ten-hectare (25-acre) farm dashing his hopes of making any financial gains from that field.
The drought, and for that matter, climate change, did not only affect Mr. Doho Sumaila and Salifu Borsu in the just-ended farming season; many farmers in the Upper West Region and largely Northern Ghana, suffered a similar heart-wrecking fate.
Data from the Upper West Regional Department of Agriculture indicated that dry spell affected 223,953 hectares of cultivated farms including maize, rice and vegetables among others.
The drought affected a total of 115, 012 farmers in the region with 40,661 of them being women smallholder farmers.
Mr. Sumaila, the 2023 Upper West Regional Best Farmer, said climate change was exerting a grave toll on agricultural production in recent times.
According to him, that was because it had made it difficult for farmers to plan and properly target their farming activities because of the unpredictable rainfall pattern.
The recent drought experienced in northern Ghana was a clarion call on farmers to adopt pragmatic strategies to counter the vagaries of the weather occasioned by climate change on their farming activities.
Climate change adaptation
As farmers grapple with the climate crisis, it is more imperative now than ever to adopt improved agricultural technologies to counter the devastating impact of climate change on agricultural production.
Agricultural research scientists have said adopting improved agricultural technologies by farmers has the potential to build their resilience against the debilitating consequences of the change in climatic conditions.
One such technology is the Genetic Modification (GM) technology, which agricultural research scientists consider as one of the tools that can contribute in mitigating the effects of climate change on farming and to enhance agricultural production amidst the current climate crisis.
GM technology is one of the climate-smart technologies available to farmers that can help mitigate the adverse impact of climate change on the agricultural sector.
Dr. Jerry Nboyine, a Senior Research Scientist at Savanna Agricultural Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-SARI), Nyankpala, said scientists have over the years, developed and improved crop varieties that can tolerate the vagaries to the weather.
He explained that the GM technology allows scientists to introduce genes or traits into improved crop varieties and that enables the crop to tolerate drought conditions much better than any conventional variety.
He said: “Already we know crops that can survive with little water. So, it is all about just finding out what in that plant makes it able to overcome the drier conditions.”
That gene is then transferred into a crop of interest to achieve a drought tolerant Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).
The science of GMO
According to the National Human Genome Research Institute, GMO “is a plant, animal or microbe in which one or more changes have been made to the genome, typically using high-tech genetic engineering, in an attempt to alter the characteristics of an organism.”
The US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) also defined GMO as “a plant, animal, or microorganism that has had its genetic material (DNA) changed, using technology that generally involves the specific modification of DNA, including the transfer of specific DNA from one organism to another.”
GM technology involves the use of genetic engineering, a process of altering the DNA makeup of an organism through laboratory-based technologies including transfer of genes of specific traits between species to meet a particular target.
At the time of filing this report, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) GM Approval Database presented 46 countries that had approved GM crops events.
They included Argentina, 113 events including cotton; Australia, 153 events including cotton; Ethiopia, two; Ghana one; Kenya, two (cotton and maize); and Nigeria, 33 GM crop events.
The Potential of GMO
Dr. Nboyine said adopting the GM technology could significantly enhance the farmers’ output as scientists can engineer crops to produce varieties that are tolerant to drought, floods and pests, which are the major impacts of climate change in the agriculture sector.
He said aside from GMOs being key in climate change adaptations, they also have the potential to produce high yields and, therefore, present an economic advantage to the farmers.
The research scientist observed that relying on the cultivation of landraces would lead to a deficit in the quantity of food produced to feed an ever-increasing population.
He said that would further be exacerbated by the reduction in land size available for agriculture and the climate crisis being experienced in recent times.
“We actually have GM maize varieties that are drought tolerant, and they can actually give you more than 17.5 per cent yield increment compared to any of the conventional drought tolerant materials under drought conditions”, Dr. Nboyine, also an Entomologist, observed.
GMO and health
While some anti-GMO advocates alleged health concerns associated with GMOs, Dr. Nboyine believed otherwise.
According to him GM technology is targeted at producing healthy crops and safe food in an environmentally friendly manner.
“So, if you are talking about a safe environment, if you are talking about healthy food, if you are talking about safe food, then definitely, GM technology is one of the ways to go”, he explained.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), GM foods currently sold on the international market had passed safety assessments and were not “likely to present risks for human health.”
It added: “No effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved.”
Dr. Nboyine explained that two key considerations during GM product developments were toxicity and allergenicity.
He explained that no scientists will proceed with development of a GM product if assessments at any of the development stages showed that the introduced trait will elicit allergenic or toxic reaction in humans.
“GM foods have been consumed for nearly three decades since their first introduction into the food chain but to date, there is not a single commercialised GM crop that has negative health effects,” Dr. Nboyine stated.
Seed market monopoly
Some critics of the GMOs also argued that GMO seed producers could monopolise the seed market and deprive farmers, especially smallholder farmers of their seed sovereignty.
For instance, Mr. Bismarck Owusu Nortey, the Executive Director of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG), said promoting GMOs in Ghana could lead to the commercialisation of the country’s food systems.
According to him, if care was not taken the country’s food systems would be in the “hands of superpowers,” who would control and direct how the country should manage its food systems.
Also, Mr. Daniel Banuoku, Deputy Director of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development (CIKOD), indicated that the Ghanaian indigenous seeds were climate resilient and could meet the needs of the farmer hence there was no need for GMOs in Ghana.
However, Dr. Nboyine maintained that though scientists had engineered some conventional crop varieties to tolerate drought but the tolerant and yields of such varieties could not match GMOs engineered to be drought-tolerant and high-yielding.
On monopoly concern, the Ghanaian scientists/developers have the capacity to produce GMO crop varieties and commercialise those varieties to meet the demand of Ghanaian farmers if given the necessary support hence, they would not rely on external seed producers.
For instance, the CSIR-SARI developed and released the Bt cowpea, a GMO cowpea that is resistant to Maruca vitrta (Maruca pod borer) and high-yielding.
Dr. Nboyine, the Bt Cowpea’s Principal Investigator, indicated that the National Seed Council had approved the commercial release of the Bt cowpea and plans were far advanced to ensure that as many farmers as possible had access to the seeds in the coming years.
“Also, the cultivation of hybrid crop varieties by Ghanaian farmers has not led to a loss of indigenous seeds of those crops or the control of our food system by companies that produce hybrid seeds”, Dr. Nboyine added.
SDGs/Way forward
Considering their potential to transform agricultural production in Ghana and increase farmers’ economic gains, one needs not to be told that GMOs could contribute significantly to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 1 on eradicating poverty, SDG 2 on zero hunger and SDG 13 on climate action.
It is, therefore, incumbent on the government to increase its support to the country’s agricultural research institutions such as the CSIR-SARI to engineer GMOs for commercialisation in the country.
Considering adoption of the GMOs in Ghana as a challenge due to myths and misconceptions around the technology, there is also the need for rigorous public education on GMOs to dispel those myths and misconceptions.
It is also worth noting that the media have a crucial role to play in promoting GMO’s acceptance in Ghana.
Hence, proponents of the technology and the government should build the knowledge capacity of the media on GM technology to enable it to propagate its acceptance.
GNA
