Training in Conservational Agriculture (CA)

During winter time we gave a few training sessions in Conservational Agriculture (CA). The last few years the training consisted mainly of theory on CA with a small practical part. Typically a beginners style of training. We have now learned that this way of training doesn’t necessarily mean that people change their way of farming or encourages sustainable agriculture Slowly we started to work more visual by making more use of pictures and practical demonstrations (e.g. angled trays on which erosion is simulated).

This year we started to use slideshows and short video’s to show desirable and undesirable agricultural practices and symptoms.

The main story line is:
1) God’s creation; man is steward.
2) what went wrong; the fall disturbing the relationship between me and God, myself and others, in respect to myself and in respect to Creation. Resulting in all the negative sympotoms seen in agriculture: erosion, low productivity, inefficient use of rainwater.
3) How to turn this vicious circle: practical and sustainable agriculture and the involvement of the Church. The biggest issue the famers want to resolve is how stockbreeding and agriculture go together. During the training we spend quite some time on this question.

With gratitude the agricultural awareness team, in which I (Jaap) take part, look back on the training sessions we had these last few weeks. There are still some training sessions planned coming weeks. This way of training is very interactive and seems to be succesful. An average training lasts for approximately 3 hours and most of the time they continue to talk for a long time about different techniques, agricultural material and so on.

This type of training we do during the winter. During spring and summer the goal of the training sessions is different. More about visiting farms, mentoring farmers and facilitating support groups for farmers. December/January and June/July are the months in which we are pretty busy with Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) and collecting different kinds of data (e.g. status of crops, weed management, yield determination).

Questions? Please ask: email Jaap on jaapenilona9[@]gmail.com (remove brackets in the email)

Until next time!