Somalia/Somaliland agriculture thread
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I came across two interesting posts regarding Mung Beans and growing sweet potatoes.
To Fight Hunger, Somali Farmers Turn to Ugandan Roots
SELELE, UGANDA —
To fight hunger, Somali farmers turn to Ugandan roots- Amina Shale, a Somali farmer, says worsening droughts and ever more unpredictable weather are making getting a crop ever harder.
"It can take a whole year before the rains come," she complained. "Growing crops like tomatoes is very tiring because I have to water them at least twice a day."
But Shale now has some new ideas about how to cope, thanks to a trip to visit the neighbors.
She and 26 other Somali farmers traveled to eastern Uganda last month to see how sweet potatoes are turning into a climate-resilient boom crop for that East African nation.
Uganda is now the leading producer in the region of root crops, which researchers say are much tougher in the face of worsening climate-change-related problems such as drought and flooding.
Some roots, like cassava and sweet potato, are being processed into flour and increasingly used for everything from doughnuts to wedding cakes.
That is helping boost incomes and ensure food security - something urgently needed in Somalia, where 40 percent of people are acutely food insecure, according to an estimate by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Today, few Somali farmers know of - or grow - crops like sweet potatoes or cassava, Shale said. She plants vegetables and fruits such as tomatoes, kale and pawpaw.
But during the FAO-backed trip to Uganda, she saw how root crops require less irrigation - and she is now considering switching, she said.
On both sides of the border, farmers are struggling with problems brought on by more erratic weather, including new or worsening pests and diseases attacking traditional staple crops.
Extreme weather is also causing more of the crops that are harvested to rot quickly, said Akello Christine Ekinyu, a Ugandan farmer from Odowo who now grows and processes cassava and sweet potato.
Ekinyu, one of the hosts for visiting Somali farmers, said the crop switch had helped lift her family out of poverty.
"I built a new brick house with the income I got from these crops," beamed Ekinyu, wearing a gold dress and matching headscarf.
In a day, she said, she can make about 100,000 Uganda shillings ($30) selling cassava and sweet potatoes, compared to $2 when she worked day jobs in town. That has been enough to send her two children to university, she said.
New Sources of Income
The key, she told the visiting Somalis, is to find ways to process crops to increase their value, such as turning cassava or sweet potatoes into finished products like flour.
She learned to do this after joining the Soroti Sweet Potato Producers and Processors Association in Uganda.
Echabu Silver, the group's chairman, explained that "instead of consuming or selling the cassava when it is raw, farmers should process it, turn it into new products and then sell it at a higher price."
That could be anything from crisps and doughnuts to flour for wedding cakes, he said.
Tony Ijala, manager of Cassava Adding Value for Africa, a roject led by the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich, said cassava is increasingly no longer grown for home consumption only, but also sold at markets.
"Even retired Ugandans are planting - and deriving an income from - cassava instead of relying on their extended families," he said.
Building markets for the new crops has taken time, however.
Akorir Helen Mary, former secretary general of the Arapai Farmers Multi-Purpose Cooperative in Uganda, said the organization's members lost 15 tons of cassava flour - worth $4,500 - in 2012, due to a lack of buyers.
But now, four years later, "there is high demand for cassava in the market, as [it is] most Ugandan industries' - like breweries' - preferred raw material," he said.
http://www.voanews.com/a/to-fight-hunger-somali-farmers-turn-to-ugandan-roots-/3522475.html
YAP Proposal #346: Mung bean production (Abdurahman Haji, Somalia)
My name is Abdurahman Haji Ahmed Osman, from the Afgoi district of Somalia. I am 23 years old and I am in my last semester of a Bachelor’s degree in the faculty of agriculture at Benadir University, one of the oldest universities in Somalia.
My dream is to rescue my country and my people, who are in shortage of food in the last two decades, by the use of agriculture.
As the title implies, my aim of this project is producing, adopting and maintaining mung bean production to eradicate the Somalia’s food shortage. This dream project will motivate the local farmers as it will help and facilitate their adoption of mung bean production.
Mung bean is a food crop that requires that producers provide special cultural management and attention. Proper management is essential, from cultivar selection, field selection and planting through harvest, plus marketing for maximum profitability. This guide helps producers meet those production challenges.
The project will get help from the Somali Agricultural Technology Group, “SATG”. SATG has over 1500 lead and contact farmers. It values farmer participation in the testing of new varieties and recognizes the importance of joint ownership of the new technology. This is the key fundamental in SATG’s working approach.
My primary incentive for doing this project is that I identified mung bean as a crop with huge potential not only to fight hunger and malnutrition but also to generate income and create jobs for many youth groups. I am very sure if local farmers adopt this project, they will appreciate it and multiply it in their communities.
Steps to achieve my project
The actual measure of my successes includes activism of local farmers to produce mung bean, of high quality and income generation, etc.
The USD $5000 budget
https://blog.gfar.net/2016/03/10/yap-proposal-346-mung-bean-production-abdurahman-haji-somalia/
YAP proposal #241: The Somali Maize Revolution (Mohamed Osman, Somalia)
I am Mohamed Osman, 24, from Mogadishu, Somalia: a fourth-year student pursuing my Bachelor’s degree in agriculture. My ambition is to improve my country’s agricultural sector, starting after I finish my studies.
I feel that my people and my country needs more than I can contribute. Though my country is in political turmoil and insecure, I always have in my heart and share with my friends, ‘No national security without food security!’
Together with my classmates, we have created an association that is called Somali Agriculture Students’ Association (SASA). It was created for improving the agricultural sector of our country for better production and sustainable economic growth.
To be honest, one of the supportable activities we are planning to contribute to our community can be this YAP2016, as we strongly believe that this can be very important opportunity to Somali people who are fed up with famine and drought.
We are going to carry out the Somali maize revolution with the help of YAP2016.
The goal of the Somali maize revolution is to increase productivity per unit area through improved maize seeds, distribution of fertilizers, improving cultural practices, transfer of technology, and integrated pest control strategies.
This creativity will target all maize growers, from small-scale farmers to large farmers that are intending to produce more than the current production.
The project will emphasize mainly maize growers in Afgoia district by giving facilities to farmers through the raising and selling of good-quality seedlings, project planning management, and marketing of agricultural produce in Afgoia district.
In Future, the initiative will offer weekly consultancy services in plantation against deforestation, which has a great impact on our country.
The project will improve the power of voluntary activities and self-commitment in our community, especially amongst the youth and students; increasing communities’ returns through the production of high-yield and quality seed products.
The Somali maize revolution project is intended to be the source of improved maize seeds of Somalia, centre of multiplication of maize seeds, fertilizer distribution, and pest management control centre for maize farmers throughout the country.
The project is planned to be carried out on two hectares of land with different trials that are available now for fulfilling all required maize cultural practices, such as land preparation with usage of soil amendments, such as DAP-di-ammonium phosphate (because there is a phosphorus deficiency in the area), weeding, irrigation, control of diseases and pests, harvesting, and post-harvest technology.
What inspires us for this better maize cultivation project is that within the period of our project, we will be able to reduce the low production of maize, increasing the productivity of maize for human consumption, as well livestock feed, if necessary, and combat against disease and pest management, promoting good harvest technology.
Also the project will lead to employment opportunities for rural youth, who are the workforce of agriculture in the area. And it will also assist some of internally displaced persons (IDPs), who are living in hardship, as we will distribute some of what we will produce.
Our community will profit from learning new technology of maize production, farmers will get seed which is viable and high-yielding, and also we will be able to satisfy with some IDP farmers in camps on Mogadishu’s rural outskirts, in order to re-start farming again.
Some of the steps we will undertake are listed here:
Our vision is to see smallholder farmers being actively involved in viable income generating programmes launched by our association, and to create a food-secure environment for our community.
The USD 5,000 funding will be spent on:
https://blog.gfar.net/2016/03/08/yap-proposal-241-the-somali-maize-revolution-mohamed-osman-somalia/
http://satg.org/
@Repenting Slave @XamarCade @Prince of Hobyo @Prince of Lasanod @Prince Abubu @Boqor Geeljire252 @government @AbdiJohnson @maestro @DuctTape @Bahal @DeathWish @Kaleel @Kalshaale @SomaliWadaniSoldier @Somali psycho @SOMALI GENERAL @oday1kenobi @Vanguard @VixR @Netero @Armadillo @jugjugwacwac @Skyzix @waraabe @Boqor Geeljire252 @shanqale @Steamdevolopment @666
I came across two interesting posts regarding Mung Beans and growing sweet potatoes.
To Fight Hunger, Somali Farmers Turn to Ugandan Roots
SELELE, UGANDA —
To fight hunger, Somali farmers turn to Ugandan roots- Amina Shale, a Somali farmer, says worsening droughts and ever more unpredictable weather are making getting a crop ever harder.
"It can take a whole year before the rains come," she complained. "Growing crops like tomatoes is very tiring because I have to water them at least twice a day."
But Shale now has some new ideas about how to cope, thanks to a trip to visit the neighbors.
She and 26 other Somali farmers traveled to eastern Uganda last month to see how sweet potatoes are turning into a climate-resilient boom crop for that East African nation.
Uganda is now the leading producer in the region of root crops, which researchers say are much tougher in the face of worsening climate-change-related problems such as drought and flooding.
Some roots, like cassava and sweet potato, are being processed into flour and increasingly used for everything from doughnuts to wedding cakes.
That is helping boost incomes and ensure food security - something urgently needed in Somalia, where 40 percent of people are acutely food insecure, according to an estimate by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Today, few Somali farmers know of - or grow - crops like sweet potatoes or cassava, Shale said. She plants vegetables and fruits such as tomatoes, kale and pawpaw.
But during the FAO-backed trip to Uganda, she saw how root crops require less irrigation - and she is now considering switching, she said.
On both sides of the border, farmers are struggling with problems brought on by more erratic weather, including new or worsening pests and diseases attacking traditional staple crops.
Extreme weather is also causing more of the crops that are harvested to rot quickly, said Akello Christine Ekinyu, a Ugandan farmer from Odowo who now grows and processes cassava and sweet potato.
Ekinyu, one of the hosts for visiting Somali farmers, said the crop switch had helped lift her family out of poverty.
"I built a new brick house with the income I got from these crops," beamed Ekinyu, wearing a gold dress and matching headscarf.
In a day, she said, she can make about 100,000 Uganda shillings ($30) selling cassava and sweet potatoes, compared to $2 when she worked day jobs in town. That has been enough to send her two children to university, she said.
New Sources of Income
The key, she told the visiting Somalis, is to find ways to process crops to increase their value, such as turning cassava or sweet potatoes into finished products like flour.
She learned to do this after joining the Soroti Sweet Potato Producers and Processors Association in Uganda.
Echabu Silver, the group's chairman, explained that "instead of consuming or selling the cassava when it is raw, farmers should process it, turn it into new products and then sell it at a higher price."
That could be anything from crisps and doughnuts to flour for wedding cakes, he said.
Tony Ijala, manager of Cassava Adding Value for Africa, a roject led by the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich, said cassava is increasingly no longer grown for home consumption only, but also sold at markets.
"Even retired Ugandans are planting - and deriving an income from - cassava instead of relying on their extended families," he said.
Building markets for the new crops has taken time, however.
Akorir Helen Mary, former secretary general of the Arapai Farmers Multi-Purpose Cooperative in Uganda, said the organization's members lost 15 tons of cassava flour - worth $4,500 - in 2012, due to a lack of buyers.
But now, four years later, "there is high demand for cassava in the market, as [it is] most Ugandan industries' - like breweries' - preferred raw material," he said.
http://www.voanews.com/a/to-fight-hunger-somali-farmers-turn-to-ugandan-roots-/3522475.html
YAP Proposal #346: Mung bean production (Abdurahman Haji, Somalia)
My name is Abdurahman Haji Ahmed Osman, from the Afgoi district of Somalia. I am 23 years old and I am in my last semester of a Bachelor’s degree in the faculty of agriculture at Benadir University, one of the oldest universities in Somalia.
My dream is to rescue my country and my people, who are in shortage of food in the last two decades, by the use of agriculture.
As the title implies, my aim of this project is producing, adopting and maintaining mung bean production to eradicate the Somalia’s food shortage. This dream project will motivate the local farmers as it will help and facilitate their adoption of mung bean production.
Mung bean is a food crop that requires that producers provide special cultural management and attention. Proper management is essential, from cultivar selection, field selection and planting through harvest, plus marketing for maximum profitability. This guide helps producers meet those production challenges.
The project will get help from the Somali Agricultural Technology Group, “SATG”. SATG has over 1500 lead and contact farmers. It values farmer participation in the testing of new varieties and recognizes the importance of joint ownership of the new technology. This is the key fundamental in SATG’s working approach.
My primary incentive for doing this project is that I identified mung bean as a crop with huge potential not only to fight hunger and malnutrition but also to generate income and create jobs for many youth groups. I am very sure if local farmers adopt this project, they will appreciate it and multiply it in their communities.
Steps to achieve my project
- Good Agriculture Practices (land preparation, timely sowing, proper weeding, irrigation, fertilizer application, control of pests and diseases, safe use of pesticides)
- Assistance of SATG and local farmers
- Monitoring and market information gathering
The actual measure of my successes includes activism of local farmers to produce mung bean, of high quality and income generation, etc.
The USD $5000 budget
- Hire a farm, machinery, and labor at a cost of USD $450, USD $800, and USD $1600, respectively
- Purchase quality seeds, inorganic pesticide, and organic and inorganic fertilizers at cost of USD $250, USD $300, and USD $500, respectively
- Irrigation water for pumping USD $400,
- Storage and market monitoring at cost of USD $300
- The rest, USD $400, will be for improvements
https://blog.gfar.net/2016/03/10/yap-proposal-346-mung-bean-production-abdurahman-haji-somalia/
YAP proposal #241: The Somali Maize Revolution (Mohamed Osman, Somalia)
I am Mohamed Osman, 24, from Mogadishu, Somalia: a fourth-year student pursuing my Bachelor’s degree in agriculture. My ambition is to improve my country’s agricultural sector, starting after I finish my studies.
I feel that my people and my country needs more than I can contribute. Though my country is in political turmoil and insecure, I always have in my heart and share with my friends, ‘No national security without food security!’
Together with my classmates, we have created an association that is called Somali Agriculture Students’ Association (SASA). It was created for improving the agricultural sector of our country for better production and sustainable economic growth.
To be honest, one of the supportable activities we are planning to contribute to our community can be this YAP2016, as we strongly believe that this can be very important opportunity to Somali people who are fed up with famine and drought.
We are going to carry out the Somali maize revolution with the help of YAP2016.
The goal of the Somali maize revolution is to increase productivity per unit area through improved maize seeds, distribution of fertilizers, improving cultural practices, transfer of technology, and integrated pest control strategies.
This creativity will target all maize growers, from small-scale farmers to large farmers that are intending to produce more than the current production.
The project will emphasize mainly maize growers in Afgoia district by giving facilities to farmers through the raising and selling of good-quality seedlings, project planning management, and marketing of agricultural produce in Afgoia district.
In Future, the initiative will offer weekly consultancy services in plantation against deforestation, which has a great impact on our country.
The project will improve the power of voluntary activities and self-commitment in our community, especially amongst the youth and students; increasing communities’ returns through the production of high-yield and quality seed products.
The Somali maize revolution project is intended to be the source of improved maize seeds of Somalia, centre of multiplication of maize seeds, fertilizer distribution, and pest management control centre for maize farmers throughout the country.
The project is planned to be carried out on two hectares of land with different trials that are available now for fulfilling all required maize cultural practices, such as land preparation with usage of soil amendments, such as DAP-di-ammonium phosphate (because there is a phosphorus deficiency in the area), weeding, irrigation, control of diseases and pests, harvesting, and post-harvest technology.
What inspires us for this better maize cultivation project is that within the period of our project, we will be able to reduce the low production of maize, increasing the productivity of maize for human consumption, as well livestock feed, if necessary, and combat against disease and pest management, promoting good harvest technology.
Also the project will lead to employment opportunities for rural youth, who are the workforce of agriculture in the area. And it will also assist some of internally displaced persons (IDPs), who are living in hardship, as we will distribute some of what we will produce.
Our community will profit from learning new technology of maize production, farmers will get seed which is viable and high-yielding, and also we will be able to satisfy with some IDP farmers in camps on Mogadishu’s rural outskirts, in order to re-start farming again.
Some of the steps we will undertake are listed here:
- We will train farmers in the agronomy of maize, by showing the tangible results after the first cultivation of our project.
- We will distribute the fertilizers and other organic manures and teach them how to use it.
- We will help in the best way to control the pests and disease.
- Our products will source of seed multiplication and some will be granted to the poor people.
Our vision is to see smallholder farmers being actively involved in viable income generating programmes launched by our association, and to create a food-secure environment for our community.
The USD 5,000 funding will be spent on:
- Logistics and administration planning procedure costs will estimate USD 800.
- USD 500 input for quality maize seeds, herbicides, and insecticides.
- We will hire land for the production at cost USD 500 and also land preparation, and ploughing with a tractor from the local community, USD 300.
- As irrigation water will be necessary, water pumping from river is estimated at USD 300.
- USD 200 for well fit inorganic fertilizers.
- USD 1000 will spend different labours (fixed and when required).
- USD 1000 hiring place for product storage and communication for market information.
- USD 100 will be the activity of organic manures.
- USD 300 will be cost of seminars and workshops.
https://blog.gfar.net/2016/03/08/yap-proposal-241-the-somali-maize-revolution-mohamed-osman-somalia/
http://satg.org/
Great job wallahi Somalia should grow more resilient crops
Excellent topic
Excellent post @SultanuuFicaan
Somalia has great agricultural potential, we should stimulate them by subsidies and building roads from the riverine areas to the city to bring the food quickly to the market. It sucks that agricultural is looked down upon and people rather study ICT and administration in a country like Somalia
Fisheries and agriculture
24:00
24:00
Zayd
Habar Magaadle
When I was in Arabsiyo last year just before the rains began, I saw it barren and thereafter a month or so it was green and what I thought was barren land turned out to be cultivated farms being prepared for rains, the community there is self sufficient buying and selling their own produce at the suuqa, it allowed me briefly to envision western Somaliland becoming a basket for the much more dryer land in the East, all that is needed is technology to ensure the farms are given enough water, they live for sufficiency at the moment which is why there is no large scale project.
It was very beautiful though, seeing a lot of citrus farms, watermelon, beans, lettuce, kamasar, xabuub etc... Shows you there is potential.
It was very beautiful though, seeing a lot of citrus farms, watermelon, beans, lettuce, kamasar, xabuub etc... Shows you there is potential.
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