myAgro agents have just completed a series of important vegetable trainings.
- Seedbed planting techniques
- Sunken planting bed techniques
- Seedling transplanting
Over the course of the next few months, the agents will use their new knowledge to train farmers on these new methods, and follow-up with support and guidance to encourage the farmers to adopt them.
In the past, farmers have not used rows to plant their seedbeds, but simply threw (broadcasted) seeds in a small space, resulting in very weak seedlings that did not have enough room to grow. This problem was made worse by the method that farmers used to remove the seedlings from the seedbed for transplanting, by simply wetting the ground and yanking them up by the stems!
To address both of these problems, myAgro agents will teach the farmers to plant the seeds in rows with ample space for proper development and to use a knife to cut a circle around the plants at transplanting time to keep as many roots intact as possible. The farmers will then transplant into sunken beds which drastically reducing the amount of watering by hand, because ridges around the beds make the water more available for the plants.
myAgro agents and office staff will be traveling to the villages where more than 70 farmers have planted one of the five types of vegetable crops (okra, tomatoes, onions, cabbage and hot peppers). At these villages we will monitor and evaluate how well the farmers have adopted the new vegetable farming methods myAgro agents taught them.
