+256758428874 | +256781767219
Discover our agricultural innovation programs.
Aim: Establish the relationship between promising initiatives in the domain of Conservation Agriculture, the productivity of the farming systems and the sustainability and resilience of its land management; identify and develop methods for improving the effectiveness, sustainability and resilience of the local Conservation Agriculture initiatives; pursue capacity building trajectories for extension services and incorporate best methods in the farmer support and dissemination mechanisms.
Objective: Combat food insecurity for rural households.
Method: Participatory on-farm field testing, evaluations and fine-tuning with local farmers.
PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION
Year 1: Conservation farming practices initiated by individual farmers in Northern Uganda have the potential to prevent further nutrient depletion of the agricultural land. The most promising initiatives will be optimized and promoted further to achieve optimal soil fertility management and achieve a more sustainable farming system.
Year 2: To prevent further nutrient depletion in Northern Uganda, the research team first organized a stakeholder workshop in Nwoya district. During this event, government officials, practitioners and members of the farming community will introduced to the principles of Conservation Farming (CA), a way of farming that minimalizes soil disturbance.
After the workshop and radio broadcasts about the project, the team shall start with participatory mapping of existing Conservation Agricultural initiatives. The farming practices of 190 innovative farmers in Nwoya and Pader district will be categorized according to the major CA principles of minimum soil disturbance, crop combinations, the use of agro inputs and soil and water conservation.
Pilot farmers
The project team shall then select 65 pilot farmers. Detailed household data will be collected from these farmers including farm characteristics, fertility perception, cropping history and labor and input costs. The highest yielding, the lowest yielding and the most intensively used plots will be selected for soil sample analysis. After having analyzed the household data and the soil samples, the team shall discuss the findings with the pilot farmers and governmental officials in an innovation workshop in Nwoya. Here valuable practices will be defined, including the use of a wide array of cover crops (for example soybean, cassava or groundnuts), intercropping and the use of banana stems or grass strips to promote infiltration of runoff.
Remarkable will be the findings that the conversion of a productive plot in fallow was equally triggered by excessive prevalence of weeds than by reduced soil fertility.
Groundnut and beans
The participants shall be tusked to select groundnut, maize and beans as study crops for the first trial experiments. They will also define the demo package: only slashing, herbicide spraying, single tillage and sowing. So the pilot farmers shall receive spray pumps and access to glyphosate herbicides. The team shall introduce herbicide application during a technical training course, and the field staff will visit the farmers every two weeks.
Additionally, the team shall organize focus a group of discussion per sub county to allow farmer to farmers' interactions on the demo package. In this way, the project will use a "step wise" approach to introduce the different elements of Conservation Agriculture
