MyAimReport

David Beckham shared photo of his family in beekeeping suit on his Facebook page and also a video of her daughter, Harper, dancing in beekeeping suit on his Instagram page as they tend to his homemade hive.

Beckham shared a video of eight-year-old daughter [Harper] dancing in a beekeeping suit as they tended to his homemade hive.

Harper’s brothers, 17-year-old Romeo and 15-year-old Cruz also joined the father-daughter duo in a photo.

Read also: Accra City Bees Project: British High Commission and BfdG organise training workshop for its grounds workers

Taking to his Instagram page, 45-year-old David shared the sweet clip of his little girl having a boogie.

Dressed in the full protective gear, including gloves and a mask over her face, Harper looks excited to get down to business.

The video starts with the schoolgirl busting some moves, David comments: “Dancing?” before laughing as Harper flashes a peace sign.

He [David] added a photo of himself with Harper, Romeo, and Cruz all dressed in their beekeeping kits and smiling at the camera.

Also read: Promoting Sustainable Beekeeping to Alleviate Deprivation and Poverty

One of their family dogs is also in shot, jumping up to be petted by Romeo.

The former Manchester United player could not resist making a cheesy ‘dad joke’ in the post’s caption, writing: “I told the kids Bee careful 🐝 🤔 … Apparently dad jokes don’t go down so well 🙄”

Read also: Bees for Development Ghana Trains Unemployed Youth in Beekeeping

On his beekeeping journey, he also shared a snap of the wooden hive he put together earlier this month, surrounded by buzzing bees.

Last week, David shared a video of himself making a hive. David’s wife Victoria, filmed her husband as he put together the hive in the back garden of their Cotswolds mansion.

The fashion designer [Victoria] videoed David hammering nails into a wooden frame, with instructions for the build place out in front of him.

Read also: Becoming a Successful Beekeeper

Narrating in the clip, she [Victoria] explained: “And David decided to start building … beehives.”

Victoria asked: “Is that your new project darling?” to which, David replied: “It is” while fixing his new contraption together.

He said with a smile at the end of the clip: “We will be very happy when we’ve got our own honey”.

Read also: Harmony in the hive: What do bees need?

Today, technology has come to replace so many human activities and notable among them is farming and other agricultural activities which takes farmers a lot of effort to achieve results.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being applied in modern day Agriculture and is changing the way farming and agricultural activities are done on a farm to increase productivity.

CRITAC Ghana is one of the organizations using the AI tools in various fields. They indicated that they are using sensors to gather data and this data is stored on their farm management system to allow them to better process and make analysis. The availability of this data is allowing them to deploy AI in their farming activities.

The AI tools they are working on now entail an image recognition which will help people to make detailed analysis on crops.

The application of these technologies is well developed in Europe, America and other places. This has been introduced in Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa including Ghana and it is gradually progressing.

On their journey to working diligently on Precision Agriculture and Farming, they are engaging edge computing.

Related story: Women, Technology and the Future

Edge computing is a distributed computing paradigm that brings computation and data storage closer to the location where it is needed, to improve response times and save bandwidth.

The origins of edge computing lie in content delivery networks that were created in the late 1990s to serve web and video content from edge servers that were deployed close to users.

In the early 2000s, these networks evolved to host applications and application components at the edge servers, resulting in the first commercial edge computing services that hosted applications such as dealer locators, shopping carts, real-time data aggregators, and ad insertion engines.

Modern edge computing significantly extends this approach through virtualization technology that makes it easier to deploy and run a wider range of applications on the edge servers.

The presence of edge computing has been felt in so many industries. Notable among them are the manufacturing, retail, healthcare industries and few to mention.

Read also: Agricultural Sustainability: How to find credit as a farmer

The use of edge computing has begun transforming the way in which farming and Agriculture is done in Ghana.

The use of technology is increasingly becoming a linkage with how infrastructure, work and people connect among themselves. This reason has however caused for the need for new innovations such as edge computing into farming and Agriculture.

Edge Computing does so many services when deployed in the field of farming such as monitoring environments, using automated systems in achieving automation, performing critical analysis of data collected and gathered on the farm, and the likes.

Read also: Ways Farmers Can Manage Risk In A Crisis

It is a hot afternoon on Friday June, 26, where the sun and cloud are in a turf war for the sky but on the market at Techiman, Maame Serwaa, is fighting a battle of survival with watermelon glut as she stirs at heaps of watermelon at the market. This 40-year-old trader is among others who hoped to cash in on a typical market day in Techiman, but are now left counting either their loses or meagre profits.

“This is the worst season for us ever since I started trading watermelon 20 years ago. Many farmers are now growing watermelon,” she said with her hands folded across her chest and his eyes glued to the fruits piling before her.

This is an indication of a bumper harvest forcing some traders on the Techiman and Nkoranza markets to abandon their products on the market – leaving it to rot because of excessive supply and lower demand.
In all this it is the poor farmer who suffers the most as the middlemen from big commercial centres including Kumasi, Accra, Sunyani and others milk these farmers since they have no option that to sell to them and making profit in the cities.

The biggest fruit, which was between GH¢15.00 to GH¢30.00 earlier this year when you visited the same markets is now between GH¢3.00 to GH¢10.00. On the farm gate, the fruit, depending on its size and colour are between 50 pesewas and GH¢5. Along the roadside, it is between GH¢3.00 and GH¢15.00.
According to the farmers and the Bono East Regional Director of MoFA [Ms Cecelia Kegya], myaimreport spoke to, many factors accounted for this excessive supply of the produce.

A favourable weather pattern, just enough rainfall and the decision of urban dwellers to invest in vast hectares of the fruit because of previous year’s win from watermelons have been some of the reasons attributed to the surplus.

“The thing with farmers is if some make some money this year from a particular crop, then everybody wants to join the party and plant the crop in question, … hence, the watermelon situation.”

They added “the early rains as well as the fact that even farmers who previously farmed vegetables went into watermelon are some contributing factors to this year’s bumper harvest. It gives the farmers quick money. It takes less than three months for the watermelon to mature. So farms that otherwise would have cultivated other crops and vegetables also cultivated watermelon, leading to so much of the crop being produced.”

Over the years, farmers in the Techiman, Tuobodom and Nkoranza area use watermelon as an avenue to make money in preparation for the new season when they cultivate vegetables including tomatoes, cowpea and staples like yam, cassava and maize.

A drought resistant crop, watermelon needs just a small amount of rain and an early rain in April opened the door for the farmers who saw an opportunity to make quick money but the end result has not been favourable.
To get a good yield, the farmers invest at least GH¢200 per acre in land preparation, spraying and weeding.

With respect to postharvest loses, , Ghana loses between 20 and 50 per cent of all vegetables, fruits, cereals, roots and tubers produced each year, while it struggles to achieve food security and eradicate hunger – according to the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation figures.

The losses are as a result of inadequate storage facilities, poor road infrastructure and the lack of ready market for most agricultural produce.
Postharvest losses are worrying situation in Ghana and the problem is as old as agriculture itself in Ghana. The statistics do not favour farmers whose best bet is selling to the consuming public with little to feed non-existing industries. Watermelon is no exception to this disturbing condition.

This is the lamentation of Mr Akwai Kyereme, who said “we [farmers] are tired, we produce so much, they [politicians] have consistently promised us a factory to process but nothing has come out of it. It is a waste of time discussing how much we lose every year because it will not amount to anything.”

The Bono East regional director of MoFA has called on the private sectors to help in the processing of raw materials from going waste. According her, the government has opened its doors to private business partners to engage in the processing factories. This way farmers and traders directly involved in agricultural produce like watermelon will be relieved of their predicaments.

The watermelon farmers in Bono East claim most of their watermelon go waste since the market women buy a big size of watermelon fruit just a cedi or even less at the farm. They added that, the farmers have to pay for the transportation fare to the nearest roadside before these women can take them wherever they so wish.

This is an unfortunate recurrent situation in the Techiman Nkoranza and its environs of the Bono East region – similar situations can be found in other part of the country. These farmers who engage in watermelon farming at times lose all their investment and find it difficult pay back their loans.

Madam Cecelia Kegya has pleaded with the farmers in the area to liaise with the Agricultural Extension Officers in various district to educate them on some of these things to avoid losses. She urged the farmers to adopt all year round farming practices which will meet the demands of their farm produce.

The Kwahu Afram Plains North District is in the northern part of Eastern Region of Ghana. The District is a remote island mostly accessible by furry, boat or canoe, with a poor road network. Despite economic growth in Ghana, inequality has been increasing in the country and poverty remains prevalent in many rural areas. The rural communities in Kwahu are suffering from high poverty rates, deprivation and under-development. One of the strongest manifestations of the level of deprivation is low-levels of education with many youngsters failing to progress beyond primary school, so further condemning them to a life of poverty.

“I went to secondary school but when I went to sit my exams I was not allowed to. I had no money to pay the exam fee. I studied hard – but now I have nothing to show for it”, Mohammed Mustafa, Bonaso, Kwahu (Feb 2019).

These people are living on the fringes of Digya National Park. Poverty forces them to exploit the Park’s resources, and men engage in honey hunting, which is against the law. This creates conflict with Park officials. Revenue from honey hunting and small-scale farming is meagre, and communities suffer from chronic poverty, poor housing and inability to pay school fees. People living on the fringes of DNP have access to rich natural resources, especially honey bees and forest.

There are already established trade pathways for honey, people are familiar with bees, and the area is suitable for beekeeping. Honey hunters have expressed huge interest in beekeeping but lack knowledge, experience and means to begin (there is no tradition of using beehives in the area). The aims for this project was to turn honey hunters into beekeepers, and to generate new revenues in order to improve their livelihoods. Women were also interested in keeping bees and honey trade.

Imagine this scenario, a poor farmer in Ghana takes out a loan (from any source) to buy an expensive top-bar hive and bees abscond or never enter (which is usual or like), he/she is burdened by a loan and with no productive means to repay. Such projects make the poor even poorer. Also, assuming Bees for Development Ghana (BfD Ghana) give away beekeeping package including top-bar hive to poor farmers and they are not able to add more hives by themselves but expert BfDG or other similar organization to bring more hives, undertaken such project could be more expensive. A top-bar hive cost about €50.

To those at BfD Ghana, such projects are not sustainable (both situation). How many people can BfD Ghana provide them with hives? How many hives per person can BfD Ghana afford? These are all important questions to ask before starting this project. People sometime fail to understand and appreciate that, it is bees that produce honey and not hives.  It is based on this that the Digya project was conceived.

BfD Ghana approached the people in the area and when we asked the community members what they expected from a beekeeping project, their initial response was that they expected to be given beehives – as they could not afford to buy them. However, later on people admitted, …

“even if we had hives – then what? We do not know how to use them. We need knowledge and skills”.

BfD Ghana proposed the idea of teaching people how to make simple, fixed-comb beehives and offered to teach people how to make the hives, manage the bees and harvest the honey. Community members welcomed this proposal. The advantages of locally-made fixed-comb beehives over the top-bar or the frame hives are many.

First, anyone can make one or more – so beekeeping becomes accessible to even the poorest. Secondly, this is more sustainable approach – as it reduces donor dependency. Thirdly, it reaches more people – a relatively low investment of resources can reach many people. Fourthly, it is scalable which means once people know how to make hives they scale-up at a rapid pace if they wish. Finally, fixed-comb hives are proven to be more practical, sustainable and successful. This project is a self-sustainable one which offers practical training in beekeeping skills and as an income generation activity for its beneficiaries.

As a result, a ten-day intensive training workshop has been organised in Apesika, Bondaso and Abomasarefo for the honey hunters and other people in those communities under our Digya Project. In terms of attendance, BfdG exceeded the target of 100 people. There were 72 participants (31 women and 41 men) at Bondaso centre, 65 participants (27 women and 38 men) at Apesika centre, 66 participants at Abomasarefo Center (45 men and 21 women). At the end people from about 10 communities were trained.

The participants were taking through topic such as (1) making fixed-comb hives from local materials, (2) baiting, setting hives and maintaining them and (3) protecting apiaries from bush fire (this was very important because bush fire is very common in the area) and other pests of bees. The training workshop involved theory and practical training on the above stated topics.

We can report that the participants have successfully made fixed-comb hives from Borassus palm logs, palm fronds, bamboos, forest vine, grasses and banana leaves. They can successfully select and prepare site for an apiary, and bait hives using locally available materials such as bee wax, lemon grass, citrus fruit peels and leaves, and other herbs. They can also set hives on stands and in the branches of trees in an apiary and maintain them as well as protect them against bush fire, ants and other pest of bees. Many wonderful ideas or methods for protecting the hives were discussed and agreed on during the workshop by the participants. There was also a discussion of the characteristics of the bees – what they like and dislike, when to work on them and when not to among others.

Apicultural Development Coordinator of BfD Ghana indicated confidently that this project is already a success though it is early days yet. BfD Ghana have this conviction because it was observed that, the participants got deeply involved and assembled all the training materials including Borassus logs they had hollowed out and made ready for completion. Some of the participants had gone ahead of the workshop to obtain pieces of Borassus palm logs, hollowed them out ready for further instructions to complete these as bee hives. One interesting example was, Isaka Konde in Bondaso who got ready 35 hollowed Borassus palm logs! Some of them shared their impressions during the training and expressed their excitement about the start of this project. For example, “we are happy because we can now make more money using cheap means to take care of our children, especially their education”.

The Future of this Project

This workshop saw a blend of different age groups coming together to learn beekeeping that they believe will help see an improvement their livelihoods. It is our hope that the knowledge they have acquired will spread to other communities in Kwahu Afram Plains of Ghana and help improve their livelihoods as well.

The presence of the young ones at the workshop gave us hope for the sustainability of this project. Something interesting happened – i.e. seeing these kids observing what was happening during the workshop. The children were amazing as they keenly observed what was going on and there and then tried their hands on building hives on their own. In fact, these kids paid critical attention to details of our discussion from the beginning to the end.

The aim of promoting sustainable beekeeping in Kwahu Afram Plains, Ghana, to alleviate deprivation and poverty would be realized after seeing what these kids did during the workshop. The future and sustainability of this project can be seen in these kids.

At the end of an intensive training week, the workshop was ended with high hope that the participants were going to make good use of the practical knowledge transferred to them. BfD Ghana also hope participants will build upon the knowledge acquired at the training workshop. BfD Ghana again motivated and encouraged them and tasked them to work collectively to develop the beekeeping potentials of the area. The participants were poised for action to make sure they succeed and improve their livelihood. It is also imperative to note that the participants are well motivated and are working so hard to start beekeeping. The workshop was very successful and 203 people were trained in the end.

If you are touched by this piece and would want more people to be trained, do not hesitate to contact Bees for Development Ghana through myaimreport@gmail.com or @BfdGhana on twitter and they will be glad to accept your donations. Together we can help improve the livelihoods of these disadvantaged people.