By Jumah Kakomo
PELUM Uganda Secretariat an the knowledge Hub for Organic Agriculture in Eastern Africa (KHEA) have come up with the first KCOA-KHEA farmer’s caravan 2022, to be held on 14th-18th February, 2022, which aims at sharing knowledge about organic Agriculture.
The caravan was flagged off on 13th/02/2022, as it involves a number of activities such as touring different organic farms in different areas of Kampala, Wakiso, Kayunga, Buikwe, Masaka, Luwero, Nakaseke and the meet Africa’s Farmer’s campaign where voices of the farmers will be gathered speaking about the organic farming practices they have employed as a result of the KHEA trainings under the KCOA-KHEA project and profile on the Continental digital platform.
Magino Pamella KHEA communications officer says, the main objective of the caravan is to stimulate debate, understanding and appreciation of organic farming practices for further strengthening Uganda’s food and agricultural systems towards resilient and sustainable productivity, better consumer health, improved income and livelihoods for smallholder farmers.
“the caravan follows the overall objective of gaining practical knowledge, skills, and approaches through peer-to-peer exchanges and learning from farmer-led enterprises”. She added.
Joshua Aijuka, head of programmes PELUM Uganda says, organic Agriculture is a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems, and people. It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects.
Francis Nsanga, the KHEA project manager adds that the caravan is to run under the theme “Sharing Organic Agriculture Knowledge and Experiences” and there has always been a demand for exchange learning event (s) by trained farmers and multipliers on farms were such practices are done on a large and commercial scale.
Meanwhile Ezra Kalule, the KHEA project Officer, disclosed some of the exceptions such as developing market information linkages between farmers with service providers, farmers/multipliers form a network of link-minded organic dealers among others.
