•Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has re-enforced its efforts in the use of ICTs under its
Conservation Agricullture Scaling-up (CASU) project

By CHRIS KAKUNTA –

WHAT do you use your mobile phone for? Buying and selling? Arranging meetings? Or just for keeping in touch with friends and family? The spread of mobile phone networks have revolutionised communication in most rural parts of Zambia.
And as phone networks spread, so do other services.
In the development sector, development and relief agencies are now using mobile phones to distribute subsidies and aid.
Instead of waiting for a truck to arrive with food or other goods, some organisations are now distributing electronic vouchers, or e-vouchers, in the form of scratch cards.
Each card has a unique number which allows the beneficiary to claim the donation, such as food or farming inputs, from an agent, usually a local shopkeeper.
Distributing food aid or farm inputs is normally an expensive and lengthy process. In addition, it does not usually support local suppliers and businesses. But the use of the e-voucher as a method of distributing inputs has been embraced by many organizations including the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Conservation Farming Unit (CFU).
Mobile Transactions Company (MTC) first created the electronic system for organizations to deliver subsidies directly to beneficiaries without having to move cash.
MTC representative Mike Quinn says the organization noted that delivering inputs was an expensive venture that was also time consuming hence the innovation.
He said under the current arrangement, the client organization issued a scratch card to a project beneficiary such as those under Conservation Farming.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been adopted by many organizations in the agricultural sector including the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) that has re-enforced its efforts in the use of ICTs under its Conservation Agriculture Scaling-up (CASU) project, a 10.9 million Euros project funded by the European Union.
CASU this farming season successfully distributed inputs to more than 90 per centof its lead farmers using vouchers that were verified by Agro dealers using the web and Short Message System (SMS) based application.
The project, which is being implemented by FAO in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAL), is a successor to the pilot project, The Farmer Input Support Response Initiative (FISRI) project, which was being implemented by FAO and MAL in partnership with the Conservation Farming Unit of the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU).
The primary focus of the project was to build capacity in Conservation Agriculture (CA) for the Department of Agriculture in the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAL) and to train 3,920 lead farmers or Own Farm Facilitators (OFFs) and local agro-dealers to manage inputs through the input voucher support system.
The key message to farmers under this project was simple and straight forward: “Adapt conservation agriculture because you will harvest something even under severe conditions.”
To increase crop productivity and production by scaling up CA among small and medium scale farmers of which at least 40 percent will be women by 2017.
This year, the CA activities have been scaled up under the CASU project to be implemented in 31 districts with 820 extension workers; 21, 000 lead farmers and at least 315,000 follower farmers over a period of four years. All the areas visited in Southern province, including Sinanzongwe, Monze and Mazabuka, farmers participating in conservation agriculture are looking forward to a good harvest.
The FAO and its partners believe that improving the capacity of smallholder farmers to embrace conservation agriculture can lead to food security.
“In the first year, FAO in addition to logistical support provided training not only to MAL staff at all levels but also provided training to lead farmers who  are instrumental in spearheading and directing conservation agriculture in their communities,” said Paul Nyambe, Acting Provincial Agricultural Coordinator for Southern Province.
Although the concept of conservation agriculture dates back to as far as 1993 when stakeholders from the private sector, government and donor community were interested in coming up with agronomic practices that would address issues of low farm productivity and enhanced sustainable production, conservation agriculture was only adopted in the country in 1999.
The concept advocates for dry season land preparation using minimum tillage. Dry season land preparation using minimum tillage or oxen-drawn implements are used to rip lines on the ground or to dig basins using hand hoes particularly the Chaka hoe, which has precisely been designed to dig specified CA holes. Under normal circumstances, about 15,850 basins per hectare could be dug. This means that only 10-15 percent of the surface area of the land is tilled to establish crops leaving the rest undisturbed.
In the following year, the farmer rips through the same lines or the small holes with crop residue retained and no burning of previous harvest  stalks is done, which adds up to the biomass.
Planting and input application in fixed planting stations, lines or holes as the situation may apply, apart from increasing the levels of manure, allows for a combination of crops through a rotation system. For example, legume based nitrogen fixing crop rotations such as groundnuts and velvet beans allow soil fertility improvement and nutrient recycling. This also breaks the pest and disease cycles thereby allowing a natural control of the diseases and pests.
During erratic rainfall, the holes are able to hold water for a longer period of time compared to when a farmer decides to grow crops using conventional methods.
Additionally, farmers practicing conservation farming start their land preparations early. This means, come the first rains, their crop would grow faster and healthy due to warm temperatures that make most of the crops such as maize to grow with vigor. In crop production, early planting is said to be a major contributor to good germination rate.
Over the years, agricultural productivity in Zambia especially among small-scale farmers has been very low with an average of about 1.6 tons per hectare in the case of maize compared to 6-9 tons of the same crop among commercial farmers.
Some of the reasons attributed to this have been low agricultural extension capacity with one extension worker covering over 500 farmers.
Although government has recently recruited Extension Workers, the absence of technical staff on the ground has had long term effects on the overall agricultural production in the country.
Apart from poor extension services, continued yield decline as a result of soil degradation associated with inappropriate farming practices such as burning of crop residue which leaves the soil bare and prone to erosion have equally affected agricultural productivity.
Similarly, changes in the weather pattern or what has now become to be known as climate change has also taken its toll. In areas such as the Southern province where they used to receive between 600 – 1200 mm of rainfall on a normal season, we have had situations where the region experiences drought or floods in some cases.
The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) also indicate that HIV/AIDS and the high cost of inputs have equally contributed to low agricultural production.
While some of these factors could be altered so as to help increase agricultural production, suffice to say that conservation agriculture could be one of the options that farmers ought to embrace in order for the country to attain food security.
Although no studies have been done so far to ascertain the contribution of conservation agriculture to the agricultural industry, in the areas where the technology has been practiced, we can conclude that indeed the concept works especially at small scale level.
Former Golden Valley Agricultural Trust (GART) Director Stephen Muliokela notes however, that for conservation agriculture to grow sustainably, the package should include livestock rearing. Dr Muliokela says without livestock, conservation agriculture is bound to fail.
His arguments are based on the fact that small scale farmers using hand hoes can only grow up to two Lima or so and that the concept requires digging holes during the dry season when the soils are hard. This means it is labor intensive and therefore not suitable to women, the youth and the terminally ill.
He also argues that livestock plays an important role in agriculture and that any technology that isolates livestock misses out on the various advantages that come along by the use of cattle. Dr Muliokela cites manure as an important ingredient in soil nutrition, an important ingredient in the conservation agriculture concept.
Without manure and draft power, the farmers will have no option but to turn to the use of artificial fertilisers thereby diluting the whole concept of conservation agriculture.
Additionally, Dr Muliokela says quality seed must go along with the concept of conservation agriculture because quality seed is the basis for good yields. Without quality seed, farmers yield would be compromised
For farmers in Southern province that are using oxen and practicing CA, Dr Muliokela’s view seems to be the key to their success. Christopher Chamoto, is a farmer in Monze and is looking forward to a good harvest because he planted earlier as a result of following instructions given to him by staff working under the CASU project.
At the time of the visit to his farm by this author, Mr Chamoto was  spraying the field using selective weed killers, a phenomena that has lifted the burden on farmers in weeding their fields almost the entire rain season.
While it may be too early to determine, the impact of the CASU project on participating farmers, lessons from past CA projects certainly guarantees us that scaling up of this project to the 31 districts in the country has enhanced input delivery within the farmers homestead, improved efficiency and timely delivery of inputs as well as helped the farmer appreciate mobile phone technology as a versatile tool for not just communicating but also making their lives better.
The project also seems to be on course in assuring the country of the necessary food security and incomes for the farmers.-NAIS.