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In May 2019, the Zambian – German Agricultural Knowledge and Training Centre (AKTC) started a new project regarding the promotion of climate-adapted farming methods as a measure to reduce the impact of climate change on the agricultural sector in Zambia, shortly called the Climate Adapted Farming Methods (CAFM) project.
CAFM is expected to promote climate smart agriculture by promoting climate smart cultivation methods in agriculture as a measure to reduce the negative impacts of climate change in the agricultural sector. CAFM intends to fulfill its mandate by reducing climate-related revenue losses and ensure income for market-oriented farmers through the application of climate adjusted tillage methods, through practicing mechanized conservation agriculture (CA). To fully implement the CAFM project, AKTC has sourced machinery and implements, which arrived this week at AKTC on GART Chaloshi Farm.
Golden Valley Agricultural Research Trust (GART) has provided AKTC with an additional 30ha of dry land for the cultivation of maize, soya bean and sorghum as rotational crops for the CAFM project. With this increase, AKTC has now over 100ha of land for field trails and demonstrations available. When conducting the CAFM project demonstrations, farmers will be invited to witness practical machinery usage on CA. The demonstrations will be meant to encourage emergent farmers to be mechanized in order to increase production, productivity and income thereby improving the farmers’ standard of living.
The CAFM project is in addition to the original AKTC project, which goes ahead as planned. But this is not the only new development.
AKTC partnering SASSCAL in the InTeCRes project
In partnering with Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL) AKTC is actively engaged in the implementation of SASSCAL’s Innovative Technologies to Improve Climate Resilience in the Zambian Agricultural Sector (InTeCRes) program.
AKTC is proud to have been selected as the place where the InTeCRes state of the art automatic weather station (AWS) will be installed and it is not AKTC alone that will benefit from the data to be provided by the AWS, but also the length and breadth of the surrounding farming community at large. AKTC would like to witness the successful implementation of both the InTeCRes and CAFM projects for the benefit of the farmers.
SASSCAL purchased a drone and a soil scanner to better analyze the farmers’ soils and to monitor the cropping progress. The trainings for this new and state of the art technology will take place at the AKTC training facilities.
AKTC aims to be a renowned training hub that provides training facilities for both theoretical and practical sessions and wants to be in the lead to showcase all new agricultural innovations, be it machinery or farming methods.
For more information about the Innovative Technologies to Improve Climate Resilience in the Zambian Agricultural Sector (InTeCRes) project, please visit http://www.sasscal.org/intecres/