Education on safe pesticide use crucial for farmers in rural Kenya
A team from CABI, AMPATH and Corteva recently visited an area in the Rift Valley and discovered alarming evidence that farmers are unaware of the harmful effects of agricultural pesticides. Through indiscriminate use, poor handling, storage and application of pesticides, farmers in the area are harming consumers and themselves.
More than advice: farmers say paid-for extension must provide a “bundle of services”
Agricultural advisory services are a critical factor to promoting agricultural development, and investments in extension services are potentially important tools for improving agricultural productivity and increasing farmers’ incomes, two desirable outcomes of food security and poverty reduction articulated in MDGs and SDGs.
Plant doctor advice increasing availability of clean banana suckers in Kitema, Uganda
In Uganda the majority of the young people are unemployed, and efforts to create employment opportunities within the agriculture sector are yielding little to no interest among them. Agriculture is not viewed as a viable employment sector, due to the perceptions that agriculture as a profession is labour intensive, results in high crop losses from…
“Our crops have answers”
Kanyumbu village is a compact rural farming village in Lilongwe district in Malawi. Farmers in this village mostly produce maize, beans, and mangoes from a few trees scattered in their fields. In 2013, they received a new service from the Department of Agriculture; a plant clinic, with a plant doctor. They were informed that they…
“With the Plantwise Factsheets Library app, I am complete”
In the Kabwe District of Zambia, Adamson Andrew Tembo is the acting senior agricultural officer (SAO) working with the Ministry of Agriculture. He is trained as an agricultural engineer and his role has been as an irrigation engineer. He was transferred to Kabwe District in January 2017 and assumed the role of SAO in July…