Farming on dry, dusty land: The thrilling story of ancestral organic farming

James Opoakpojor, an organic farmer at Techiman Faawoman, thought agroecology “was a joke” until he almost lost his life.

But he was forced to change his mind in 2018 when he attempted to use glyphosate, a weedicide popularly known in Ghana as “condemn”, to get rid of weeds on his farm.

“I think it was threatening to rain, and I didn’t cover my nose,” he recounts. “I’m sure I inhaled it. I almost lost my life. I laid down here for almost three days.”

When he recovered, Mr. Opoakpojor decided to take the agroecology principles he had learned in school seriously.

On a half-acre land, he has been rearing fish, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and goats. He also keeps bees and has been growing organic mushrooms since 2018. On that same land he has plantains, pawpaw and cassava.

His food crops are lush, and his livestock are plump. The waste produced by the animals are used to feed the soil on which the plants grow and waste from the plants feeds the animals. It’s a virtuous circle that ensures that Mr Opoakpojor does not need to use any chemicals – not even fertilizer – on his farm. To get rid of weeds and pests, he uses urine from his household instead of weedicides and pesticides.

This mode of farming without synthetic chemicals is known as agroecology.

Another farmer, also in the Techiman area, who uses agroecological principles, describes agroecology as the farming methods of his forebears.

“The farming practices that they now call agroecology were the methods that our ancestors were using. They thought about everything on the farm, they didn’t destroy them because they knew every organism is important,” Nana Kwaw Adam says.

The variety of plants on his 15-acre farm in Forikrom, near Techiman in the Bono East Region “helps the land to be more fertile,” he says.

His decision to plant close to a dozen crops on his farm, he says, rejects conventional farming which focuses on monocropping and the use of agrochemicals.

“When you look in this farm, you can see a variety of plants – mango, royal palm, oil palm, avocado, guava, cashew, banana, plantain, yam, and I have neem tree, which is used as pest repellent in the farm.”

Nana Kwaw and his family have been working on this farm since the 1980s when he quit his job as a civil servant at the Ministry of Defence in Accra. They farm with agroecology in mind. The 68-year-old farmer says this is how his grandparents used to farm long before the word “agroecology” was coined. As his forbears did, he allows goats to graze and chickens to roam free on chemical-free land. The animal droppings and the weeds on the farm serve as fertilizer, he says.

Agroecology is a farming approach that takes into account how humans, animals and plants, harmoniously interact with their environment. It aims at restoring and maintaining soil quality. Advocates say it encourage biodiversity as it avoids the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.

Nana Kwaw doesn’t entertain synthetic fertilizers because “when you apply [man-made] fertilizers, they feed only the plants not the soil,” he says. “But when you use composting, it nourishes the soil and the soil nourishes the plants in turn.”

Other farmers are using agroecological practices to revitalize arid lands and mitigate the effects of climate change.

In 1990, when Fuseni Bubon started farming on a dry, hot, loose and sandy five-acre land, there were about four or five trees on the land at Gundoug in the Upper East Region. He says his prospects of succeeding were slim.

However, through the adoption and practise of agroecology principles, he breathed life into the barren land and transformed it into a forest-type vegetation.

Before he started, the “whole environment was fragile,” he says. “So, I decided to observe how the soil is because it was only the front part of the house that was fertile.”

He decided to plant a variety of trees to revive the land.

“You know when there are trees on your farm, they shed their leaves, moderate sunshine and also add nutrients to the soil. Waiting for three years I saw a change. So, I decided to add moringa, cashew and mango trees.”

He realised that keeping animals would not only give him income and food, but he could also use their waste to feed the soil.

“After five years, the whole environment was conducive,” Mr Bubon says.

The nature of the land required that he employed grass and stone bonding to prevent soil erosion and to strengthen the base of the plants.

Instead of ploughing his land before planting, he said he adopted what is known as the minimal tillage method.

“This helps plants to hold enough water for them to grow well as compared to using plough or using tractors. That rather destroys the land,” he says.

Mr Boubon’s decision to employ these methods comes at a time the Upper East Region is facing rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall patterns, and a rise in the frequency of catastrophic weather events, according to the Centre for Sustainable Transformation in May 2024.

The centre also indicated that due to climate change causing prolonged droughts and water scarcity, agricultural production has reduced, exacerbating food insecurity in the region. Farmers now find it challenging to estimate the planting and harvesting seasons due to the disruption of traditional farming practices caused by the unpredictable rainfall patterns.

Mr Boubon’s success on his small patch of desert land, which has transformed the micro-climate of Gundoug, a community in the Nabdam District in the Upper East Region, serves as an example of how farmers in the northern regions of Ghana can deal with the challenges of a changing climate.

When The Fourth Estate visited Mr Bubon’s farm in April 2024, at a time it had not rained in months, the work he had done for over 30 years, was evident. Compared to the bare, vast and dry land that surrounded him, his farm had pawpaw, mango, turkey berries and palm trees among others all in healthy condition.

Mr Bubon believes adopting the practices he has employed to affect the micro-climate in his community will greatly impact the region. He says since “ancient times” farmers have used basic agroecology principles to feed their families and communities while protecting their environment.

It is the best [and] natural way to create a friendlier environment. It doesn’t degrade the soil. It moderates the sunshine. It also improves the biodiversity and even the climate change that is now global. It is this system that can solve our problems,” he says.

Natural pesticides/weedicides

Like Nana Kwaw, Mr Bubon in Gundoug uses neem tree leaves to repel pests. Mr Bubon also uses bitter leaves for the same purpose sometimes.

“All these are natural. If you use them on crops, you won’t have any problem. But the conventional farmer applies what will cause harm to the human system [and the environment],” Mr Bubon says.

Mr Opoakpojor’s near-death experience influenced him to experiment with natural methods of pest control.

“The latest discovery we have made is the use human urine to kill weeds,” he says. “We have tried several of them – human urine, potash from coco pods, African black soup. We mix these together and spray on [the weeds] and they die,” he says.

Benefits

Aside the production of quality and healthy food crops, the three farmers we interviewed say choosing agroecology has also boosted their earnings.

Mr Opoakpojor says farming agroecologically sustains his entire family, which includes two children, a wife, his parents and in laws. 

Agroecology has been the backbone of my life,” he says. “Everything you see here is made from agroecology. I don’t do any other work. This is what I do.”

Mr Bubon says its not only his family that has benefited from his farming methods, but the entire community has also gained from it. “People come to market and come to this place because of the organic system. Whenever they go to hospital and they are short of blood, they come to for my turkey berries.”

Looking back after more than four decades, Nana Kwaw says he made the right decision to implement the farming practices of his forbears when he started farming. He has not only become wealthy as a farmer; his hard work has also been recognized. He won The Best Beekeeper and Best Organic Farmer awards in the then Brong Ahafo region in 1999 and 2005 respectively.

According to him, this has been because he adopted agroecology practices from the onset. “What has helped us is that we observed and adopted how our forebears farmed,” he says proudly.

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