What do you get when you put together a volunteer introducing agriculture as a business skills, and another volunteer introducing new agriculture technology? You get a very bright future for Bongo!
Alnel is a volunteer with VSO who has come from the Philippines. He is currently working just down the road from MoFA with the Bongo Trade Centre, and as ironic as it sounds, I only met him a month after arriving at a party in Bolga (Go figure!). When I first talked to him he was solely managing the Trade Centre in Bongo; however, due to his strong agricultural background (farmer in the Philippines with a major in crop sciences) he has managed to begin sharing his skills within the Agric sector.
He is currently working on a few projects, with the biggest one creating waves within MoFA as he has made what seems “too good to be true”… actually true! The technology, known as, The System For Rice Intensification, literally allows farmers to yield twice the rice while significantly reducing costs and minimizing inputs. It wasn’t the idea that blew all of us away, it was the fact that he walked the talk as you’ll see in the following Picture Xploration…
Alnel creates the nursery bed for Alnel and a farmer lay out the rice They add additional beds and
the rice using only fowl manure. seeds onto the nursery. cover with bags to lock in
condensation.
4 Days Later… 10 Days later! Traditional nurseries are kept in
Ready to go!! the open where they get eaten by
animals; takes 21 days to mature.
Roll it up… & Off you go! No need to hire labour
to pick the seedlings from the traditional nursery
or any costs to transport them!
Line the fields with measured Add some homemade organic fertilizer, Start transplanting your
cross sections (Using simple chicken dung… seedlings.
wooden tech created by Alnel)
to allow perfect planting in rows!
In Due Time!
Why is this so cool? Well besides the fact that you only need 10kg of seeds per HECTARE, compared to the usual 40kg of seed per ACRE; that by planting in rows you can now eliminate manual weeding with a cool rotary weeding technology that Alnel has began fabricating here; only organic fertilizers are used throughout the whole process; and it take significantly less time for the whole rice making production… did you know that, despite the perfect land and conditions to create their own rice, Ghana produces only 21% of its rice requirements and spends $450 MILLION annually on imported rice! Unbelievable? Believe it!
Bongo recently decided to try this technology out on the current rice expansion program that is being implemented in the Upper East. The hopes are high, but so are the current results of this technology!
But wait… there’s more!
Alnel has also introduced THE CARBONIZER… Sounds cool eh! Well it is… After harvesting the rice tillers, you need to thrash the rice to get rid of the husk. Usually this husk is blown away; however, Alnel has shared and fabricated a technology that turns the rice hull into organic fertilizer! All you do is mix the charcoal burnt hull with chicken dung and voila… what you got from the ground, now organically re-enters it!
Some other projects Alnel is working on is fabricating a distiller extract oil (which can be used for many things, including massage oil which he produces and sells back in the Philippines) from vetivert roots, while using the vetivert top part for straw in basket weaving; a farmer training centre for farmers to learn new technologies like these and rent the necessary equipment; and an eco-tourism idea he has near Vea dam, all of which will be blogified once they begin to take shape!
BIG things happening in Bongo my friends… BIG THINGS!!! 
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