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Soumis par Stephen Wamalwa le mar, 27/06/2017 - 08:50 Permalien
Succesful Agricultural consulting services to smallholder farms by Smart Fertilizer East Africa
AfDB can help us with up-scaling and strengthening these areas that has been pillars for Smart Fertilizer East Africa since initiation in 2015, being agricultural based consultancy company established after extensive experience by the founder in various busy agricultural setups and concluded that poor agricultural practices especially on lack of apecific agricultural system suitable in diverse smallholder farming environments not only obstruct accesses to lucrative international market but also the cause of the continuous decline of crop yield, increased poverty and deteriorating farming ecosystems among smallholder farms, which is mostly controlled by women and youth. We offer:
Currently we achieved to develop specific agricultural practices suitable for farms such as Algoma in mweiga specializing in vegetable productions, Meru greens farm in Embu (growers and exporters of fruits and vegetables) and herb growers in Muranga county. We aspire to increase our client base locally and beyond. However, lack of financial resource and mentorship has derailed our original plan of fulfilling entire 6 pillars, in which we argue that when we optimize the focus on these 6 pillars then smallholder farms will be able to reverse declining crop yield, reverse soil nutrient depletion, reduce vulnerability of smallholders farms to ravaging effects of climate change and reduce dependency to local market.
Soumis par Stephen Wamalwa le mer, 21/06/2017 - 15:07 Permalien
Among the biggest challenge facing the crop sector in sub-Saharan countries, especially Kenya are climate variability and mainly continuous soil nutrient depletion. A specific cropping system such as Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) is regarded as the best option for resource poor to sustainable increase crop yield and reverse negative effects of climate change. Numerous on-farm Interventions of ISFM have been successfully up-scaled in various locations. However up scaling to a larger area like entire country and other similar regions have stalled by lack of soil data to quantify such effects on soil quality, and climate, since traditional soil sampling and ash analysis is tedious and expensive. Landscape and soil reflectance spectral libraries approaches that have been used in the past to assess soil degradation on L. Victoria basin and offers a specific basket of recommendations, however the approaches have never been embraced on smallholder farms where soil degradation, declining yields and poverty is highly pronounced. The approaches can be best decision supporting tool to develop agricultural land system database, especially on soil nutrients that vary from one location to another hence yield variability. The Bank’s Feed Africa Strategy; through its flagship and programs can help in establishing such database that will give timely, precise and affordable farm specific agricultural recommendations via farmers’ cell phone upon request, this will not only cut back widening gender gap, but also enhance decision making by researchers and policy makers on policies concerning soil conservation and sustainable yield strategy, which soil is a primary production medium for smallholder growers for at least an unforeseeable future.
Yes we can upscale use of selected Brasiccas
Soumis par Stephen Wamalwa le lun, 10/07/2017 - 16:46 Permalien
Among the biggest challenge facing the crop sector in sub-Saharan countries are high cost of pest and soil borne disease management, that not only increase cost of production but also yield decline among smallholder farms. The rampant use of pesticide has raised a major concern as the cause of deteriorating human health and entire ecosystems.
Brassica crops used in crop rotations and as green manures have been associated with reductions in soil-borne pests and pathogens. These reductions have been attributed to the production of volatile sulfur compounds through a process known as bio-fumigation, and to changes in soil microbial community structure. In past research, in vitro assays, volatiles released from the chopped leaf material of Brassica crops and barley with Indian mustard inhibited (80–100%) growth of a variety of soil-borne pathogens of potato, including Rhizoctonia solani, Phytophthora erythroseptica, Pythium ultimum, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, and Fusarium sambucinam.
This is regarded as the best option for resource poor in not only controlling soil borne disease and pests, but also offers the best opportunities as crop cover since is beneficial in crop rotations, extraction of edible oils, composting green manure and nutrient rich fresh vegetables for improved livelihood among smallholder farms which are mainly controlled by women and contributes to 75% of food production in Kenya.