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INT06 - Foundations for Farming: Partnership Reports

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Report Date: November 11, 2022

Report on Visit to Oliver Mulenga's Farmers Saturday 15th October 2022

Report by: Edwin Chama

Introduction

The report highlights the activities and findings which took place during the farm visit in Lufwanyama District at Mr Besa and Mr Mokola’s farms who are the farmers in Mr Oliver Mulenga’s area (ZAM09a).

Objectives
encouraging The purpose for this visit was to monitor and encourage the farmers mentioned above on how to implement the Foundations for Farming knowledge they learnt during the workshop in August 2022 which was sponsored by Bright Hope World. Basically, the trip was a follow-up visit.

Activities
Our first visit was at Mr Mokola’s farm where we found the piles of old and new compost being made as seen in the pictures below. (Edwin is in gray t-shirt, followed by Mr Mokola and Mr Besa in the coloured t-shirt.)

Mr Mokola will start land preparations as soon as possible on a small area of 25m x 50m just to try the new farming techniques learnt in FfF. Part of the land is a dumbo area as seen in the picture below.

started the process

wet area

Mr Besa’s farm or garden, is also in the dumbo area. We found Mr Besa has started preparing beds for vegetables but he has had a few challenges in implementing the FfF techniques in the dumbo area.

Recommendations

I recommend that more farm visits will be helpful to the farmers. During the farm visit, I encouraged the two farmers to quickly start the rainfed land preparations as they were behind time. The farmers were also encouraged to make two more piles of composts.

If these two farmers can be encouraged and supported in implementing the FfF techniques, there is a possibility that they can influence a lot of villagers in their area as one of the two holds an influential position in the chiefdom. I was encouraged by the two farmers, their heart to learn and implement especially about composting making.

Conclusion

Generally, the trip was successful. Anthony and I had a good time to motivate and encourage the farmers to continue with the same spirit of wanting to change for better in farming. It was also a chance for the two brothers to ask me questions about FfF techniques and how practically they can implement it accordingly and I gave them appropriate advice.