Scaling Out Integrated Soil Fertility Management Technologies in Zambia project
DAPP Zambia is addressing the challenges of poor agricultural productivity through the Scaling Out Soil Fertility Management (ISFM), Technologies Project in Eastern Province. The project will work towards sustaining agricultural productivity and incomes for 20,000 smallholder farmers in Petauke, Katete and Chipata districts of Zambia.
The use of organic agriculture enhances biodiversity and soil fertility. ISFM is the driving paradigm for intensifying agriculture in an eco-efficient way. Promoting ISFM options to smallholder farmers is contributing to appropriate management and use of inputs (seeds, fertilizers, organic matter) by the farmers, improving their crop yields and raising their incomes.
Through the ISFM project, DAPP has established 132 demonstration fields in Chipata, were baseline soil testing was done to assess the effects of ISFM practices on soya bean, maize rotation and fertilizer use. The project has facilitated the acquiring of loans for 278 farmers from Vision fund in form of farm inputs. Further, 9 aggregate centers have been equipped with 3 big platform scales each. The aggregation centers have been helpful to facilitate the bringing together of the farm produce such as maize and soya by farmers for collective marketing purposes.
The project has built capacity of 60 representatives from farmer organizations in governance and management, and 25 agro dealers in agro business management. With the built capacity, agro dealers have now acquired dealership licenses from well-established seed companies such as Zamseed, Seedco, Pioneer and Pannar. This has strengthens the capacity of public and private partners and enabled them to conduct sales of crop seeds on a commission basis.
ISFM project focuses on the key stable food crop (maize) and integration of production with soya beans. The project has endeavored to promote the uptake of tested ISFM technologies among smallholder farmers through cereal-legume intercropping and rotations, good agronomy, erosion control, water harvesting, conservation agriculture, disease management, adaptation trials and field days.
The project works towards increasing smallholder farmers’ awareness of ISFM technologies, strengthening the capacity of public and private partners to transfer ISFM research outputs to farmers and to increase smallholder farmers’ access to farm inputs and output market.
To achieve this, 132 demonstration fields were established in Chipata, were baseline soil testing was done to assess the effects of ISFM practices on soya bean, maize rotation and fertilizer use. The project has facilitated the acquiring of loans for 278 farmers from Vision fund in form of farm inputs. Further, 9 aggregate centers have been equipped with 3 big platform scales each. The aggregation centers have been helpful to facilitate the bringing together of the farm produce such as maize and soya by farmers for collective marketing purposes.
The project has built capacity of 60 representatives from farmer organizations in governance and management, and 25 agro dealers in agro business management. With the built capacity, agro dealers have now acquired dealership licenses from well-established seed companies such as Zamseed, Seedco, Pioneer and Pannar. This has strengthens the capacity of public and private partners and enabled them to conduct sales of crop seeds on a commission basis.
DAPP’s implementing partners are International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute. This project started in January 2015 and 2017.
Implementing Partners: Intrernational Institute for Tropical Agriculture(IITA) and Zambia Agriculture Institute Research Institute(ZARI).
