admin
Monalisa Chikwengo
GOVERNMENT’S partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to train farmers on ways of taming the harsh effects of climate change has had ripple effects with 1 000 farmers benefitting from the programme, which initially targeted 180 beneficiaries in Mt Darwin, Makoni and Gokwe South districts.
The programme is designed to promote environmental sustainability in agriculture by providing technical assistance to African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries in implementing Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs).
FAO sub-regional coordinator for Southern Africa who is also the FAO representative in Zimbabwe, Eswatini and Lesotho, Dr Patrice Talla said the ACP-MEAs established nine farmer field schools (FFS) in Makoni, Mt Darwin and Gokwe South districts with the aim of promoting ecosystem-based agricultural production systems, including agroecology, organic farming and regenerative agriculture in the 2022/23 season.
“One hundred and eighty farmers participated in the FFS to experiment on the use of ecosystem-based practices, including crop diversity, fall armyworm management, inter-cropping, water-use efficient techniques and fodder production,” he said.
ACP-MEAs is a US$11 million EU funded global project present in ACP countries with US$600 000 allocated to Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Tanzania and Niger are piloting and the project in Africa with hope of up-scaling to 25 countries.
The FFS will continue to serve as centres of appropriate and homegrown technology development and develop solutions that are tailor-made to address local problems in the local context.
“Given the environment under which agriculture operates (climate change, social, economic, political, environmental issues), FFS will continue to identify challenges and come up with sustainable solutions,” said Dr Talla.
As Government has embraced the FFS approach, more FFSs will be established to serve farmers within the localities and the current three FFSs will serve as nuclei for out-scaling.
While the FFS provides training in specific technical areas and special topics, the FFS’s de facto approach is experiential learning.
“Farmers learn through experience by doing, observing, developing, recommendation and solutions,” he said.
Farmers work under a facilitator who has undergone specialised training on facilitation and are equipped to address their situation by identifying key enterprises, available resources, and problems encountered.
“They then conduct experiments to establish various potential solutions to the identified problems. The process culminates in suggested solutions, which are then shared with the community for adoption,” added Dr Talla.
The FFS site’s season-long studies culminate in a field day where the FFS work findings and recommendations are shared with stakeholders (fellow farmers, leadership, extension service providers and development practitioners), he added.
Online Reporter