FARMER MAKING STRIDES IN BEANS INTERVENTION PLAN

HAPPY MULOLANI George Nsowela, 50, is a passionate small scale farmer in Kalukanya village in Nsenga Hill Agriculture camp in Mbala district of Northern province, who is an ardent seed grower. Nsowela, whose family size is eight, settled in Kalunkanya with his family in 1996. The main crops he cultivated include: maize, sweet potatoes, finger millet and cassava. It is worth stating that when Nsowela engaged in farming, he merely grew maize for sale leaving a bit for home consumption. He also grew beans, traditionally using recycled beans seed. The cultivation of beans using recycled beans resulted in low yields and ultimate reduced production. However, farmers underwent facilitation at one of the awareness meetings last year in 2015 by agriculture field staff, who linked them to the Smallholder Agribusiness Promotion Programme (SAPP), a programme under the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAL) funded by the International Fund Agricultural Fund (IFAD) whose interventions, among others, is to link farmers to potential markets by developing farmers’ business acumen in their enterprises. Mr Nsowela reveals that when he attended the SAPP inception meeting on the Beans Intervention Plan in Mbala, he realised how the programme interventions will boost beans production through pure seed. Through the programmes’ interventions, their beans production levels have gradually increased as farmers have embraced the use of pure seed as opposed to recycled seed. SAPP through MAL facilitated a service provider, DESLO to work with the farmers in a bid to promote the provision of pure seed taking into account, that farmers in the area had for a long time been using recycled seed, thereby affecting their production levels and productivity. The targeted number of farmers to be seed growers was 30 growers and these were given soft loans under DESLO and signed contracts with farmers. DESLO’s package was 7.5kilogramme, inoculant and 25 kilogramme bag of fertilizer, of which the farmers were expected to repay 30 kilogrammes of beans pure seed produce. The beauty of the Outgrower scheme arrangement, is that farmers are guaranteed of market by the service provider as long as it is certified as pure seed. Nsowela never anticipated to be become a seed grower neither did he realise the benefits of growing seed. ‘’I want to increase my area under cultivation because I have realised it is more profitable to grow seed than the commercial one,’’ he says. Mr Nsowela further said it was more profitable to grow pure seed than maize as the yields of maize had reduced tremendously due to the soil acidity in the area. He revealed that one lima produced about 10kilogramme bags of maize while one lima of beans produced an average of 60kilograme bags of beans, which even fetched more on the market. Mr Nsowela appreciates SAPP’s interventions as it has helped in linking the farmers to seed grower managers that have been working at improving the quality of seed, enhancing productivity and ultimately, increased production. He explains how low his production was given the scarcity of pure seed in Mbala district before become seed grower. ‘’Per lima, I would harvest five bags of beans using recycled seeds while when I used certified pure seed, I attain good yields averaging 30bags for half a lima,’’says Nsowela. He further points out that what SAPP has done differently is that they not only emphasis but have also supported the beans enterprise at every stage of progression in terms of linkage, capacity building and expertise.