Conservation agriculture Tanzania_casestudy.pdf - Sokoine ...

mainly cover crop practices were adopted. The main pathway in Karatu was theuse of indigenous (traditional) knowledge (cover crop and crop rotation). The useof pigeon pea as a cover crop had been practised in Karatu for a long time whilelablab and mucuna were recent introductions. Again, lablab was preferred tomucuna because lablab is edible (seeds and leaves) and has a ready market. Lablabis normally cooked with maize and banana and is also used instead of beans inmany dishes. In Arusha the same recipe is mixed with sour milk to make a specialmeal (‘loshoro’). Lablab and pigeon pea have a ready market within and outsidethe country. Lablab at the local market in Arusha town can easily fetch a price ofTZS 100,000 per 100-kg bag. In the sowing season of 2003/04, lablab was a scarcecommodity, selling at over TZS 120,000.Pathways of conservation agriculture implements: Adopting cover cropsmeans introducing a direct seed planter, that is, the hand jab planter and the animaldrawndirect seed planter. Implements adopted were according to the status of afarmer. For example farmers with small acreage (< 2 acres) opted for jab planters,while those with 2–10 acres preferred the oxen-drawn direct seed planter. Thisimplies that adoption depended mostly on farm size. Larger-scale farmers with arelatively bigger area of over 20 acres are more innovative and are generally greaterrisk takers than small-scale farmers.Pathway through groups—farmer field schools: Community members havebeen trained in conservation agriculture principles through voluntary groups andorganized demonstration plots of different conservation agriculture practices vsconventional practices. Ten farmer field school (FFS) groups with 314 members (158male and 156 female) have been formed in Karatu District. All groups received basictraining in conservation agriculture (what it is, its principles, advantages, how to startconservation agriculture, etc). Other related issues taught included awareness of HIVand AIDS and how the pandemic affects agriculture, how to prepare liquid fertilizer,how to strengthen their groups and get access to credit facilities, how to improve theirdairy cattle by integrating conservation agriculture and livestock, seed selection, qualityand sourcing, establishment of an input stockist system, grain borer and other storagelosses and control, microfinance access and management, and farmer organizationand empowerment. Basing on their production problems, the groups went throughan interactive process of selecting possible conservation agriculture options that couldbe tried in the group plot. Treatment plots under CASARD includedmaize + lablab; no rippingmaize + lablab + rippingmaize + pigeon pea; no rippingmaize + pigeon pea + rippingfarmer practiceAll FFS groups meet once a week, working on the ecosystem Agroecological SystemAnalysis (AESA), which is an integral part of FFS methodology. The project provideslegume cover crop seed, which has been planted in farmers’ own plots (FFS groupmembers). In addition, each member household in Karatu, that is, 10 FFS groupsx 35 members and non-members, received 0.5 kg lablab or pigeon pea seed. It isreported that many of the households had to acquire more seed from the open84 Ringo et al.