• What we do
  • The People
  • About Us
  • Why Innovation Africa
  • Contact Us
Innovation AfricaCreating the Future Today
  • Feature Articles
  • Innovation
  • Agriculture
  • ICT
  • Technology
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Health
  • Store
  • Contact Us
Menu
  • Feature Articles
  • Innovation
  • Agriculture
  • ICT
  • Technology
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Health
  • Store
  • Contact Us
  • Getting technologies out to farmers using innovative approaches: the Africa RISING – SIMLEZA project

    January 29, 2016 Editor 0

    In Zambia, The SIMLEZA-Africa RISING Research and Development project tested a range of improved technologies such as conservation agriculture (CA), soybean agronomy, improved and stress-tolerant germplasm, maize-legume systems, inoculum and improved utilization of legume products with farmers.

    Farmer Agness Phiri has had first experience with herbicides forweed control and highlighted great labour savings for weeding for women and children when applying such products Photo credit: Christian Thierfelder/CIMMYTFarmer Agness Phiri has had her first experience with use of herbicides for weed control. She highlighted great labour savings for for women and children who usually carry out weeding activities in the farms in Zambia

    To help scale-out these technologies, the project revived “mother-baby” trials, a participatory methodology pioneered by CIMMYT over a decade ago to test stress- tolerant maize in Africa and subsequently adapted for diverse agronomic practices. The approach has now been adopted by researchers worldwide. Comprising field experiments grown in farming communities, mother-baby trials feature a centrally-located “mother trial” set up with researchers’ support, supplemented by “baby trials” composed of subsets of the mother-trial treatments that are appealing to farmers. The babies are grown, managed and evaluated by interested farmers, who host them and may talk to fellow farmers, researchers and other visitors about the results.

    Moving beyond trials to farmers’ fields

    In 2014/2015, the SIMLEZA-Africa RISING project team identified scalable technologies in its project portfolio and encouraged farmers to choose those that could be practiced on their own farms using the mother baby trial approach. The menu of practices included crop rotations, intercropping, herbicide use and improved drought-tolerant maize varieties. Interest was high amongst farmers, 807 of whom volunteered to grow “baby trials”. Some farmers even extended their plots beyond the designated areas in the excitement of trying something new.

    Farmer Richard Zimba standing in front of a rotational cowpea plot, which offers leaves for relish, groundcover to suppress weeds, soil fertility improvement and grain at harvest Photo credit: Christian Thierfelder/CIMMYTFarmer Richard Zimba standing in front of a rotational cowpea plot, which offers leaves for relish, groundcover to suppress weeds, soil fertility improvement and grain at harvest

    First results from the babies were very encouraging as farmers experimented with the technologies on their own farms, got exposed and gained hands-on experience. First out scaling beyond researcher-managed trials created a critical mass of ownership by smallholder farmers. One of the ripple effect of this ownership was demand for technologies that encourage agro-dealers to start stocking critical inputs such as herbicides and/or inoculum. Legume buyers, who usually prefer to buy in bulk were equally impressed by the possibility of finding large quantities of legumes in central locations, which would make their operations more viable.

    Farmers need a compelling case for technologies that make it easy to change from current practices to improved ones that assure them greater and more sustainable yields while conserving their soil fertility. New technology should have options that are viable in the short and long term in order to be attractive to smallholder farmers. Exposure to new technologies, such as through the Mother and Baby approach used under SIMLEZA-Africa RISING is one way of increasing farmers awareness and getting them involved in improved agricultural techniques. Because the plot size of a baby is small, farmers can easily manage and judge the benefits and decide if this would be worthwhile for them or not. So far the response to widespread exposure of technologies has been overwhelmingly positive.

    Written by Christian Thierfelder, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)


    Go to Source

    Related Posts

    • The listening post: How Africa RISING technologies are improving farmers’ lives in Zambia and MalawiThe listening post: How Africa RISING technologies are improving farmers’ lives in Zambia and Malawi
    • On the trail of adoption data: Africa RISING embarks on study to evaluate use of improved technologies in northern GhanaOn the trail of adoption data: Africa RISING embarks on study to evaluate use of improved technologies in northern Ghana
    • Open Data in Developing Countries -Monitoring and Evaluation study on Kenyan OD technologiesOpen Data in Developing Countries -Monitoring and Evaluation study on Kenyan OD technologies
    • A Growing Lifeline: Mobile Technologies in Agricultural Development
    • ‘Energy democracy’ becomes more real‘Energy democracy’ becomes more real
    • Uganda: Blending Agriculture and Mobile PhonesUganda: Blending Agriculture and Mobile Phones
    Sovrn
    Share

    Categories: Agriculture, Feature Articles

    Tags: SIMLEZA project, technologies

    Maybe Uber isn’t God’s Gift to Mankind Assessing the implementation and influence of policies that support research and innovation systems for health: the cases of Mozambique, Senegal, and Tanzania.

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

    You must be logged in to post a comment.

Subscribe to our stories


 

Recent Posts

  • SL Crowd Green Solutions September 21, 2020
  • Digital transformation in the banking sector: surveys exploration and analytics August 3, 2020
  • Why Let Others Disrupt You? Take the Smart Self-Disruption Journey! August 3, 2020
  • 5 Tips for Crowdfunding During the Pandemic August 3, 2020
  • innovation + africa; +639 new citations August 3, 2020

Categories

Archives

Popular Post-All time

  • A review on biomass-based... 0.9k views
  • Can blockchain disrupt ge... 697 views
  • Prize-winning projects pr... 692 views
  • Apply Now: $500,000 for Y... 611 views
  • Test Your Value Propositi... 537 views

Recent Posts

  • SL Crowd Green Solutions
  • Digital transformation in the banking sector: surveys exploration and analytics
  • Why Let Others Disrupt You? Take the Smart Self-Disruption Journey!
  • 5 Tips for Crowdfunding During the Pandemic
  • innovation + africa; +639 new citations
  • SME Innovation: 10 Priorities for Support Post-COVID-19 
  • Africa RISING Annual Progress Report 2018 – 2019 now available
  • Fodder beet feed supplementation delivers dairy success for Ethiopian farmers
  • Using theory of change for outcome-oriented research
  • Africa RISING partners publish soil fertility management guidebook

Tag Cloud

    africa African Agriculture Business Business model Business_Finance Company Crowdsourcing data Development East Africa economics Education Entrepreneur entrepreneurs Entrepreneurship ethiopia ghana Health_Medical_Pharma ict Information technology Innovation kenya knowledge Knowledge Management Leadership marketing mobile Mobile phone nigeria Open innovation Organization Research rwanda science Science and technology studies social enterprise social entrepreneurship south africa Strategic management strategy tanzania Technology Technology_Internet uganda

Categories

Archives

  • A review on biomass-based hydrogen production for renewable energy supply 0.9k views
  • Can blockchain disrupt gender inequality? 697 views
  • Prize-winning projects promote healthier eating, smarter crop investments 692 views
  • Apply Now: $500,000 for Your Big Data Innovations in Agriculture 611 views
  • Test Your Value Proposition: Supercharge Lean Startup and CustDev Principles 537 views

Copyright © 2005-2020 Innovation Africa Theme created by PWT. Powered by WordPress.org