KIRA – Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM) a Networking for a greener Africa, has organized a Farmers’ Caravan aimed at equipping local farmers improve on organic agricultural practices.
Speaking to reporters, Mr Francis Nsanga, Knowledge Hub for Organic Agriculture in Eastern Africa (KHEA) Project Manager said PELUM Uganda is charged with the task of training farmers to create awareness on the different organic agricultural practices. Organic agriculture is not expensive as people think.
Nsanga added that project is in its first phase of implementation for a period of 32 months (August 2019-March 2022) in 4 countries of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania.
The KHEA Hub is one of the five hubs of the knowledge Center for Organic Agriculture in Africa (KCOA) project. It’s part of the initiative by the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through its executing agency GIZ to support a network of regional knowledge hubs for organic farming in Eastern, Western, Northern, Central and Southern Africa.
Biovision Africa Trust (BvAT) is the lead coordinating agency of the project in Eastern Africa with co- hosting arrangement with Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM) Uganda.
The Acting Country Coordinator of PELUM Uganda, Mr Joshua Aijuka said that the Continental Digital Knowledge platform is part of the KOCA project coordinated by the GIZ. The overall objective of the KOCA is to introduce knowledge hubs successfully as an innovative strategy for prompting Organic Agriculture (OA) with actors in the regions of East, West, North, Central and Southern Africa. For Eastern Africa, the overall goal of the KHEA project is to ensure that Ecological Organic Agriculture is integrated into the various countries ‘agricultural systems.
“Following a series of multiplier and farmer trainings on Organic Agriculture practices under the Knowledge Hub for Organic Agriculture in Eastern Africa (KHEA) project,” Aijuka noted.
In giving the overview of the KOCA KHEA Farmers’ Caravan 2022, the Head of KHEA Mr Ezra Kalule explained that there has always been a demand for exchange learning events by trained farmers and multipliers on farms were such practices are done on a large and commercial scale.
“One of KHEA’s project component is on marketing and markets for organic products both national and international,” said Kalule.
According to Kalule, it’s on this background that a learning visit (farmers Caravan) is being organized for trained farmers under the project to appreciate organic farming practices on a wide scale. Kalule emphasized that the objectives of the project is to increase the exposure of participants to the broader project, build capacity of farmers.
Aijuka explained that the caravan will bring over 40 participants drawn from all the 4 regions of Uganda, especially those involved in production, value addition, agro-input supply and agro-processing.
KHEA’s Communications officer, Ms Pamela Magino noted that the Farmers’ Caravan is a 5 days learning journey and with strict standard operating procedures to ensure all are safe.
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