BENEFIT-REALISE programme BDU Cluster held a field day on wheat production technologies

BENEFIT-REALISE programme BDU Cluster held a field day on wheat production technologies

Enebsie Sar Midir (ESM) Woreda, Debre Medhanit Kebele - October 12, 2019

BENEFIT-REALISE Programme works on enhancing the livelihood security of Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) client farmers through promoting improved crop production technologies. It has different ongoing activities in its 10 target Woredas.

The programme organized field day in collaboration with Enebsie Sar Midir (ESM) Woreda office of Agriculture at Debre Medhanit Kebele on wheat production technologies: a pilot on 1000 birr bread wheat small pack, PVS of bread wheat and demonstration of improved bread wheat technologies. The field day partakers were farmers in the Kebele, farmers from neighbouring Kebeles’ and participants from Bahir Dar University, Amhara National Regional State (ANRS) Bureau of Agriculture, Amhara Agricultural Research Institute (ARARI), Adet Agricultural research centre, ANRS Disaster prevention and food security programme coordination office, Debre Markose University, Administrations of ESM Woreda, ESM office of Cooperative promotion and Motta Union.

Following the welcoming and the opening speeches by the representative of ESM Woreda Administrator, Dr Almaz Giziew, BENEFIT-REALISE BDU cluster Manager, welcomed the participants again and told them about the collaboration activities of the day’s field visit and the ongoing activities with ESM Woreda agriculture office. She also explained the goals of BENEFIT-REALISE Program in general and Bahir Dar University cluster in particular.

According to Dr. Almaz, the aim of the field day was:

  • To visit the ongoing activities on the field
  • To share experiences among stakeholders and to set shared responsibilities for the future on issues that can be done together

The programme has five ongoing activities in the Woreda: Participatory Variety Selection of bread wheat, 1000 birr small pack of wheat, Haricot bean pre-scaling, Teff validation trail and improved bread wheat demonstrations technologies. 

Following her speech, field visits were held on technologies of PVS of bread wheat, demonstration of bread wheat and 1000 birr small pack of wheat. REALISE experts, Kebele office of Agriculture experts and direct beneficiary farmers express the objectives of each activity, implementation of the processes and the experiences with the programme.

According to the beneficiary farmer’s, the use of improved technologies and agricultural practices is one way to increase their productivity and escape from harsh times. Besides, the direct beneficiaries mentioned the performance of the introduced technologies is far better than the traditional techniques. They also express their gratitude about the program and told the participants about the Development agents contribution.

After the visits, different questions, comments and suggestions were raised and entertained in the winding-up discussion. Demand for demonstrating new crop varieties (i.e. faba bean, grass pea, Teff); scaling up of the demonstrated technologies to a wider community; the need for strong collaboration with the research centres and other projects; fertilizer application problems and water loading challenges were the main issues raised and discussed among the participants.