Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
10
Vegetables: Traditional ways of
managing their diversity for
food security in southern Ghana
Essie T. Blay
Introduction
Vegetables constitute a major source of protein, minerals, and vitamins in the diet
of resource-poor communities because of the relatively limited access of the
people to animal protein sources. They are consumed fresh in sauces or cooked
in stews or soups. Often a meal in such communities consists of a starchy staple
and a vegetable dish (soup or stew) spiked with comparatively little animal
protein. Therefore to complement the staple foods, the rural folk maintain and
utilize a wide array of indigenous vegetables, both wild and cultivated.
Vegetables are found in many land-use systems as cultivated crops or volun-
teers in annual food-crop farms, as part of agroforestry systems, cash crops in
mixed cropping systems, monocrops, or as volunteers/wild plants in orchards,
uncultivated fallows, or virgin lands.
Recent developments, such as environmental changes, introduction of improved
varieties, cash crop production in monocultures, pressure on farmlands, and changes
in dietary habits associated with urbanization, are increasingly taking their toll on the
array of vegetable germplasm conserved and utilized by the rural populace over
several generations (Martin and Ruberte, 1975). If left unchecked, erosion of
the indigenous sources of vegetables will compromise the food security of the rural
populations and also incapacitate future crop improvement programmes. A cost-
effective and sustainable method of ensuring the maintenance of this germplasm is
to document traditional knowledge and practices for their management and utiliza-
tion and to adopt a participatory approach to arrive at the best farmer practices.
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