By PASSY HAACHIZO –
ABOUT 450 small-scale farmers in Monze District have benefited from the Government’s conservation farming programme during the 2015/2016 farming season.
The farmers in Kaumba area have been trained in good agricultural methods to increase their yields.
Kaumba agriculture camp assistant officer Friday Tembo said in an interview that farmers that had practised conservation farming were expecting to harvest enough maize for consumption.
Conservation farming is a system or practice which aims to conserve soil and water by using surface cover to minimise runoff and erosion and improve the conditions for crop establishment and growth.
The farming method also involves the use of herbicides and other weed killers to eliminate unwanted plants in the field.
Mr Tembo said the method was the best as it held water and prevented it from running off thereby giving enough moisture to the plant.
“In this method we teach farmers to do basin or ripping methods in order to keep water from running off. This is ideal, as you know, we only had rain in November which later disappeared and only reappeared later this year, but for those farmers we engaged in conservation farming they are benefiting now,” Mr Tembo said.
Mr Tembo said his team had trained 30 lead farmers by 2015 each of who had 15 followers practising conservation farming and that all the beneficiaries were doing fine.
He called on all the farmers throughout the country to practise conservation farming as the climate was no longer favourable for many small-scale farmers.
“We also encourage them to plant a local tree called Musangu which is rich in nitrogen and at the end of the day their crop thrives,” he said.
Mr Tembo said his team had since intensified the sensitisation on the adoption of the method ahead of the next farming season to give every farmer an impetus to have the best harvest from their fields.