Biovision Africa Trust was among other stakeholders that celebrated World Food Day in Kakamega County. The theme of this year’s event was Grow, Nourish & Sustain Together.
Biovision Africa Trust chose this day to disseminate farmer best practices videos to farmers and other stakeholders on Kakemega County. A total of 82 farmer video disks were disseminated during the event.
The topics of the videos were on:
- Establishing a Push-Pull Plot
- Indigenous trees
- Integration of crops and livestock
Biovision Africa Trust (BvAT) is producing Best practices videos to enhance farmer uptake of Ecological Organic Agriculture techniques for biodiversity conservation in Africa.
The project is funded by Turing Foundation through Biovision Foundation and the African Union led EOA-Initiate supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The project’s aim is to produce a total of 10 Farmer Videos in Kenya, Benin and Mali for enhancement of Agricultural Advisory and Extension Services focusing on technologies that enhance biodiversity. This Project is therefore designed to bridge the gap between research knowledge on agroecology/organic farming approaches and technologies in easy-to-understand formats and influence farmer knowledge and behavioural change through a step by step of how to do videos.
The guest of honour Mrs Rachel Okumu, CEC Agriculture Kakamega County led hundreds of Kakamega residents along various organizations including BvAT in marking this year’s World Food Day, an event marked world wide on the 16th of October every year.
Speaking during the event Mrs Rachel Okumu called on farmers to embrace modern farming techniques advanced by the county government to increase productivity. She reminded citizens to diversify agriculture by engaging in dairy & poultry farming as well as fish farming in addition to organic crop farming. “Dairy farming is now picking up in the county and is expected to be more lucrative once Malava Dairy plant has been constructed and operational,” she said.
The event brought together other participants representing various Agriculture stakeholders in Kakamega County, namely:
- Farmers
- County government officials
- Non-Governmental Organisations
- Extension workers
- Ministry of Agriculture representatives
- Agro-dealers.
Biovision Africa Trust (BvAT) also undertook a side event on 17th October that screened the videos to representatives from different farmers groups in the Kakamega region. The videos were translated in local languages in order to reach the locals and give a clear understanding of the content material intended to be dispatched. The side event was attended by 30 farmers converged at Isembe Church of God.
The event motivated the experimentation and uptake of Ecological Organic Agriculture technologies and innovation using appropriate Participatory Farmer Videos (PFV) for enhancement of Agricultural Advisory and Extension Services.
Author : Biovision Africa Trust (BvAT) through Ecological Organic Agriculture (EOA) -Initiative.