ISU’s Sergio Lence and Seed Science Center faculty members are partnering with Chemonics, as part of USAID’s Ghana Agriculture Policy Support Project. The team is working to improve agricultural policy making, policy analysis, and policy implementation to benefit subsistence farmers in Ghana.
The group is building private sector capacity and encouraging smallholder participation in the policy making process by establishing a legal seed framework that provides the agricultural community with quality seed. They are also strengthening the seed sector by training local seed enterprises to develop and implement quality management manuals.
In 2017, former ISU Seed Scientist Joe Cortes (pictured above) facilitated a Strategic Planning Workshop for the Ghana National Seed Trade Association Board of Directors and Staff in Kumasi. He also held Quality Management Workshops for Seed Enterprises in Accra. The quality management workshops were designed to provide private seed producers in Ghana with the process management skills needed to develop seed enterprise quality manuals to improve their administrative and operation systems.
Sergio Lence and North Carolina State Professor John Beghin met with four staff members from Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture’s (MoFA) Policy Unit in July 2017. They designed a training program that can be executed by the University of Ghana’s Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research (ISSER), provided training for the staff members, and helped the group write a policy brief on the potential economic impact of an armyworm infestation on Ghana’s maize crop.
Pictured above: Joe Cortes
Iowa Seed & Biosafety News —10/01/17