While much of the knowledge needed to improve global agriculture
already exists, including within remote indigenous, it often does not
reach those farmers that could benefit the most.
• I
ncrease the level of education on crop and natural resource management for farmers.
• Promote the development of village-based knowledge centres.
• Provide
access to scalable information technologies for farmers to receive
weather, crop, and market alerts, as well as other early warning systems
to help them make the right decisions for sustainability and
productivity.
• Establish open and transparent two-way
exchanges that capture the ‘voice of the farmer’ for policy formulation
and implementation.
Getting tips
FICOM, the Farmers
Information Communication project in Uganda is helping farmers access
information (Syngenta Foundation is a sponsor). Important tips on
growing crops are relayed from the Uganda National Farmers Federation
headquarters to district level offices, and then to 24 'village phone
centres', in which each farmers' group owns a mobile phone. The farmers
also send and receive SMS messages with updates on market prices, saving
at times a whole day's travel to market. Milly Sekandi a member of
Zibula Atudde Women's Group purchased a village phone. She and other
farmers have grown upland rice and maize and are now able to confirm
prices in Kampala and the border trading markets in Busia, Kenya. A few
years ago it would have been the middlemen who dictated the price and
made the most profit from sales.
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Linking researchers with farmers |
Lifelong Learning for
Farmers (L3), an initiative by the Commonwealth of Learning, an NGO,
operates in South India and Sri Lanka in partnership with local banks,
ICT providers and farmers groups. It aims to improve the flow of
information from researchers to farmers by offering tips, advice and
information on best practices to local farmers through internet based
kiosks. Farmers form a local association and identify their needs and
objectives and L3 helps bring them the relevant information to help them
achieve these objectives. Information is provided by national or
regional institutions such as universities.
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Providing training in Integrated Crop Management (ICM) |
The
plant science industry trains over 300,000 stakeholders every year in
the safe use of its product and in integrated crop management.
Successful programs, like in India, have allowed farmers to improve the
quality of their production and access new markets. For example, Muvva
Ramachandrao, a chili grower in Andra Pradesh, India, has been able to
improve the quality of his chili crop and this has enabled him to sell
it at much higher prices. He has reduced his loss from pest damage from
40 per cent to under 10 per cent and uses less pesticide and fertilizer.
The improvement in quality is such that his chilies now command a
premium price in a competitive market.
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Beating poverty with milk while linking rural and urban economies (Kenya) |
With
its high-quality milk, Nairobi-based Brookside Dairy has a 40 per cent
share of the Kenyan dairy market. Seven per cent of its 80,000 suppliers
are commercial farmers and the remainder are small-scale producers. The
widespread lack of refrigeration facilities means that Brookside
employs an army of delivery personnel, including more than 1,000
“bicycle boys” in the Nairobi area alone, to collect milk. Its sales
depots now stretch from the East coast to the shores of Lake Victoria in
the West. Brookside’s training field days, each attended by up to 6,000
local farmers, help spread best practices in livestock management and
provide networking opportunities for smallholders, many of whom are
geographically isolated. The business links rural and urban economies
and offers a sustainable route out of poverty for many. Additional
benefits to local communities are health education programmes and
funding for school, church and road building projects.
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