The Beela Project and Trax Ghana Partnership
The vision of the Beela Project is to save, preserve, and protect indigenous and local seeds from going extinct, with a focus on the Upper East Region of Ghana. The mission of the Beela Project is to conserve agrobiodiversity, preserve farmer and community seed systems, and to promote the exchange of native and local seeds, knowledge, and know-how among farmers and their communities.
The act of selecting, saving, preserving, and keeping seeds is an activity that farmers and their communities have practiced since the beginning of agriculture. Farmers and their seed systems have preserved the plant biodiversity, promoted agroforestry, protected ecosystems, and contributed to the wellness and sustenance of their community. However, climate change, intellectual property rights regimes, and international seed laws threaten farmer and community seed systems, along with the indigenous knowledge that informs and guides seed systems.
In August 2022, the Beela Project collaborated with Trax Ghana on a mission to support farmers and their communities in the Upper East Region to protect their local seeds and keep farmer seeds in their communities. Trax Ghana has extensive experience working with and supporting farmers to use agroecological methods on their farms. Trax Ghana equips farmers and communities with skills and training on integrated soil fertility management, agroforestry, and crop livestock farming all contributing to agricultural practices that are in harmony with nature and local environments.
This partnership began in August 2022 when the Beela Project approached Trax Ghana to support the establishment of a seed bank to house local seeds at Trax Ghana and to build the capacity of Trax farmers to join the Beela project as farmer leads. The groundwork for establishing the Beela Project had started years prior, however, in August 2022, Trax Ghana endorsed and partnered with the Beela Project on their vision and mission for farmer seeds systems and indigenous seeds. Before receiving funding from The 11th Hour Project, and technical support from SeedChange for 2024 project activities, funding to support all previous work came from Beela founder Abena Offeh-Gyimah, a 2022 GoFundMe, and in-kind support from Trax Ghana Field Coordinator Solomon Abeinge, and Trax Ghana Director Vincent Subbey.
2023 Highlights
Seed Fair – West African Peasant Farmer Seed Fair
In 2023, Beela and Trax Ghana began with two farmer leads, Joyce Asekulga from the Kambusigo community and Fuseini Bugbon from the Gundoug community, both in the Upper East Region of Ghana. The two farmer leads attended the West African Peasant Farmers Seed Fair organized by COASP in Benin, West Africa. Trax Ghana Field Coordinator Solomon Abeinge and Beela Founder Abena Offeh-Gyimah attended as well. The farmer leads and field coordinator brought local and indigenous seeds from the Upper East Region of Ghana to Benin to display, share and to exchange. They brought traditional seeds like the frafra potatoes, early millet, late millet, sorghum, baobab, beans, bambara beans, okra, groundnuts, etc.
Seed fairs, seed sharing, and seed exchanges are an important source for farmers to access other varieties of local and indigenous seeds. Farmers are likely to access a variety of a key crop that might benefit their community, or bring seeds other farmers might be also trying to access. The sharing and exchanging of seeds strengthen farmer seed systems, as well, as the genetic diversity of seeds. Seed fairs are a dependable source for farmers to access quality seeds from other farmers as long as they are grown with agroecological methods. Seed fairs enable farmers to share seeds that can serve as a security for that seed to be grown and stored safely elsewhere.
Testing Crops - Benin Seed Fair
Joyce, Fuseini, and Solomon brought back the seeds of millet from Niger, sorghum from Senegal, maize from Zimbabwe, seeds of various vegetables from women farmers from Mali, and seeds of various crops along with their varieties from various countries they observed would be useful for their seed systems, and also important to their community. After the seed fair, we included three more farmer leads to the Beela and Trax project partnership, Ernestina from Pelungu community, Comfort from Yakoti, and Patrick from Sakote community, who were also given seeds from the seed fair to grow in their community for trials. During the rainy season of 2023, all five farmer leads tested the seeds from Benin. Most of the tested seeds did well, and farmer leads were able to save seeds for this coming farming season, while other seeds posed challenges for future learning.
Seed Bank - Beela Bolgatanga Seed Bank
The Beela Project first approached Trax Ghana with support for a seed bank that would house local and indigenous seeds across farming communities from the Upper East Region to become a source for farmers to access their own seeds. At the beginning of the project, from August 2022 to March 2023, the seed bank was populated with various local seeds, and also seeds from the seed fair were populated in the seed bank. However, as the project grew in 2023, we evaluated the approach we took to populate the Beela Bolgatanga Seed Bank, and through a consensus with our farmer lead and project team, we came to the conclusion that the seed bank had to be populated with seeds that farmers and their communities wanted there, and that we also had to develop a communal processes on how communities wanted their seeds protected, hence we decided to pause on the Beela Bolgatanga Seed Bank.
2024 - Strengthening Local and Indigenous Food Systems in the Upper East Region of Ghana
In 2024, the Beela Project, in partnership with Trax Ghana received funding from The 11th Hour Project and technical support from SeedChange, (https://weseedchange.org/), to implement a project called, “Strengthening Local and Indigenous Food Systems in the Upper East Region of Ghana.” This project focuses on three main project areas: a seed security assessment and seed fair; community seed banking for conservation, production, and exchange of local seeds; and agroecology for food, nutrition, and income security. This funded project is a huge step towards the vision of seed and food sovereignty that is farmer and community lead, in the face of climate change, and the threats of the current intellectual property regimes, and restrictive seed policies. Through technical support from SeedChange, this project provided training to ten farmer leads, field coordinator, technical assistance, and a monitoring, evaluation, and learning officer on SeedChange’s Seed Security Assessment and Action Plan (SSAAP) to help communities assessment, and evaluate their seed systems, and seed security, to determine the state of their local and indigenous seeds for their key crops. We are excited for this partnership and we look forward to this collaborative project for Ghana’s Upper East seed and food sovereignty.
