Conservation agriculture Tanzania_casestudy.pdf - Sokoine ...

villages with eight farmers (Mwalley and Mawenya 2002). CIMMYT also held trialsin Mareu village. They started with five farmers and three treatments: ripping withlablab intercropped with maize, maize intercropped with lablab with no ripping,and conventional practice (CIMMYT 2005).In 2004, Conservation Agriculture and Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Developmentintroduced the farmer field schools. This is an ongoing project. According to farmers,the approach is much preferred to the innovative farmer one. Field school farmers canshare experiences easily, motivate one another to carry on and are encouraged to teachothers. The field schools have shown signs of widely diffusing conservation agriculture.They own and manage acre plots, with five trial plots of the following treatments:• Plot 1: maize + lablab, no ripping• Plot 2: maize + lablab, ripping• Plot 3: maize + pigeon pea; no ripping• Plot 4: maize + pigeon pea, ripping• Plot 5: traditional practiceDiffusion has also taken place through group visits—from one village to anotherand one person to another. The Participatory Agricultural Development andEmpowerment Project is currently supporting field school groups for otherprojects—for dairy cattle, cattle and farmer visits. King’ori village visited MerikinoiField School farmers to experience conservation agriculture. The empowermentproject is also providing a 75% subsidy for conservation agriculture implements forthe newly formed farmer field school in Arumeru District (CASARD 2005)SARI has offered research and training to enhance conservation agriculturetechnology. It distributed seeds to farmer groups and other organizations; 586farmers received lablab seeds. SARI distributed seeds to seven World Vision farmerfield schools with 15 farmers each, 324 farmers, new field schools with 28 farmers,8 farmers in Likamba village, 24 farmers with Women’s Agriculture Developmentand Environmental Conservation (WADEC), 14 Roman Catholic Women Arushafarmers, 50 farmer with ASARECA (Association for Strengthening AgriculturalResearch in Eastern and Central Africa), and workers at SARI. Women’s AgricultureDevelopment and Environmental Conservation is an NGO that started two groups onconservation agriculture in Mareu, Malula, and Kolila villages, with technical supportfrom SARI. They used the CASARD village facilitators to train their groups.RECODA started with two groups under sustainable agriculture in Manyire. In 2006,RECODA distributed cover crop seed: 300 kg lablab, 300 kg pigeon pea and 100 kgmucuna to more than 100 farmers in Manyire village. The organization has spread thetechnology to 10 more villages and has 22 new groups using conservation agriculture.Government extension staff provide technical support, supervise, monitor, collect andcompile data in most of the projects. Soil samples are taken, depending on the projectdemands, and sent to a soils laboratory at SARI to analyse nutrient and organiccontent and soil moisture.Diffusing conservation agriculture was enhanced by demonstrations, whether infarmer groups or by individuals since it was easy for farmers to see the results on farms.Farmer participation in new technology supported diffusion.28 Maguzu et al.