Obtaining soil information to make an informed decision has been a challenge to Ghana’s poor and medium scale farmers.

Loss of nutrients like nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus result in low crop yield.

The Soil Research Institute (CSIR-SRI) has intervened in transforming all analogue soil information in Ghana into an interactive Soil Web-based Application platform.

This will ensure food security through efficient and sustainable use of soil resources in Ghana.

The Application is a sustainable support system to modernize soil resources management.

The platform contain digitized soil maps of specific locations, soil characteristics and appropriate nutrient requirement for key crops in each agro-ecological zones of Ghana.

Estimation of fertilizer requirement for a given area or crop could be known in advance before project implementation.

And last agricultural investors could have better information and input for drawing business plans.

“We’ll save investors a lot of money. They won’t waste resources,” lead scientist, Dr. Emmanuel Dugan said.

The Canadian government through modernizing Agriculture in Ghana (MAG) program financially supported the platforms development.

This is meant to facilitate government’s initiative towards transforming the country’s agriculture sector.

MAG’s ultimate goal is to develop sustainable agriculture sector for improved food security.

This therefore called for increased adoption of relevant production-enhancing technologies and increased adoption of market-oriented approaches to farm management.

Dr. Dugan said the Institute is collaborating with Esoko Ghana to rope in more farmers to utilize the platform.

Principal Technologist on the project, Alexander Owusu Ansah believes funding will be crucial in updating the system.

“As soil is being used, the properties keep changing. We want to be current so day in, day out we want to take samples, analyze and input them. Therefore, we’ll need funding to do this,” he appealed.