Windhoek
A desperate cry for funding went out yesterday from some 12 000 communal crop farmers and their families in the north, with the announcement that the most successful crop farming project ever in Namibia – the Namibian Conservation Agriculture Project (NCAP) – was under threat after the Cooperative League of the United States of America (CLUSA) confirmed its pilot project – worth N$2.1 million over a period of three years – has come to an end.
The devastating news reached crop farmers yesterday at a stage when planting of maize and mahangu is in full swing and amid extraordinarily high interest in Conservation Agriculture (CA), because of the consecutive droughts and a severe food insecurity situation, with some 600 000 Namibians in urgent need of drought food aid from government.
Confirming the news, project coordinator of CLUSA in Namibia, Inomusa Nyati, told New Era that CLUSA’s NCAP project – implemented through Creative Entrepreneurial Solutions – has been the most successful agri-project so far. NCAP 2 was established late last year in conjunction with Kongalend Financial Services, but additional funding is now of utmost importance to ensure the project continues and that trained farmers reap the benefits of the CA system.
He says NCAP2 has the potential of reaching out to even more people, but expressed fears that securing funding will not be easy, as other organisations also have a mandate to do similar work. “What would be helpful is for NCAP to look for own funding and continue with the work we did and then invite these other projects to our field days. Results on the ground would help NCAP find new funding,” he stated.
NCAP was a three-year project with the primary objective of training farmers in CA, thereby laying down afoundation for scaling up CA activities. Judging from the increase in the number of farmers requesting ripping, it is clear that NCAP did very well, he says.
“There has to be a way whereby the incoming organisations upscale what is already being done. The best approach of course would have been resourcing NCAP to lead the roll-out, but as of now we have no means to do that. The NCAP’s idea of having farmers contribute to or pay for ripping should be highlighted as a sustainability strategy, because farmers would be more interested in something they contributed to.
The promotion of private service providers should also be seen as a private sector contribution towards food security and a sustainable approach, because it brings together those who are in business and farmers, who need to produce for their families. In this case end-users are brought together and a platform is created for them to maximise output, Nyati said.
Some 12 000 farmers have been trained in CA over the past three years and all of them witnessed positive developments in CA fields during the 2014/2015 season despite low and erratic rainfall. Farmers who have already tested rip furrowing or hand-hoe basins, crop rotations and soil cover (either crop residue retention or green soil cover) are in the majority of cases putting their entire crop fields under CA.
Currently there 27 private rip furrowing service providers and all of them started land preparation late last year. Most of the tractor owners are Kongalend Financial Services clients, while some are Agribank clients. CE Solutions held the mobilisation meetings together with the lead farmers and they are responsible for training and mentoring tractor drivers and coordinating land preparation services, as well as conducting quality control of rip furrow services across the 57 northern constituencies where NCAP 2 operates.
Farmers brought together through NCAP have requested continued training in climate-smart agriculture methods, expansion of the number of lead farmers and the building on the foundations of a sustainable service system for rip furrow land preparation. The NCAP 2 consortium also intends to address seed shortage by working with farmers on seed multiplication, encouraging them and agribusiness entrepreneurs to become seed suppliers and distributors, by partnering with seed multipliers to buy seed in bulk for distribution to the local market.
NCAP, in its initial phase, ran for three years and was implemented in 57 constituencies across the seven crop-producing regions of northern Namibia. NCAP’s implementation was founded on the Farmer Field School methodology, whereby lead farmers are trained in CA methods, thereby empowering them to pass on skills to up to 25 of their neighbours.
NCAP lead farmers teach the three linked principles of CA, namely minimum soil disturbance, permanent organic soil cover and crop rotation. Kongalend’s intervention to provide tailor-made finance through its Lima Power loan to subsistence farmers practicing CA, is deeply rooted in its understanding of the importance of developing communities, capacitating them to produce food for themselves.
Kongalend also believes that conservation agriculture – when implemented correctly – is a powerful tool with which to fight poverty.