Farmers responded positively to the recently concluded World
Food Programme-led P4P postharvest workshops in Malawi according to an official
field report by Alex Chigovera, Technical Support Engineer of GrainPro. The
report was collected from the post-training surveys that the participants
completed.
More than 70 percent of the 114 participants indicated that
they gained important knowledge that would be very useful in reducing food
deterioration during storage. Facilitation quality was evaluated by
participants with more than 75 percent of them giving it excellent ratings
across the three locations. The participants are expected to share their
training at their respective communities.
The workshops were organized in partnership with GrainPro
and its partner in Malawi, Chemicals and Marketing. The 114 participants, 33 of
which were women farmers, represented 54 farming groups from the regions of
Blantyre, Lilongwe, and Mzuzu. In Malawi, women smallholder farmers play an
important in food production.
The farmers were taught postharvest management principles
and practices, knowledge of seed preservation using hermetic storage, and
recommended methods for safe long-term grain preservation without using harmful
chemicals. To better demonstrate the principles of hermetic storage, the
farmers had hands-on training using the SuperGrainbag – a lightweight hermetic
liner bag for dry agricultural commodities such as food grains.
Due to its significance to the safe preservation of locally
produced dry agricultural commodities, future workshops to include more women
farmers are being proposed. There is also a need for refresher workshops to
facilitate the continuous sharing of new technologies to farmers. This ensures
that smallholder farmers are kept abreast with best practices in food
preservation and pest control.
0 comments:
Post a Comment