My name is Anthony Acquah, a member of UCC Youthmapper, YouthLead, Omanbapa Foundation and Youth In Focus and I was at the African Green Revolution Forum 2019 with the theme: leveraging digital transformation to drive sustainable food systems in Africa.
On the 4th of September, 2019 I was privilege to be at Policy Symposium 1- Increasing Adaptation and Risilience of African Food Systems, which was the first forum for the day. The aim of this forum was to discuss around the priority of strengthening adaptation and resilience in African agriculture in the face of climate change.
Food is what keeps us alive, Professor Dr. Patrick V Verkooijen, CEO, Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) stated. I agree with him on this point because whatever we do, we need food to sustain us and sustainably, we need to produce to prevent any global climate change we which will affect not only us but also the future generations.
During the discussions, I learnt that the global climate issue is because of our careless activities we do and with agriculture, activities such as bush burning, use of fertilizers and pesticides go a long way to affect the environment, leading to climate change.
I will urge all in agriculture, mostly the youth to come up with innovative ways to protect our environment but still farm and get our produce. For me, instead of throwing my plastic waste into the bin, I reuse them to germinate my farm produce and this I know will go along way to reduce the quantity of plastic waste in the environment and also those that are burnt to produce fumes which destroy our ozone layer.
As a youth, everything happening now should be of interest to you because if it is done well, we are those to enjoy the benefits but if it is done anyhow, we are the people to suffer its consequences.