Smallholder farmers have started embracing knowledge gained from the N2Africa project to improve groundnut production in Minakulu, Oyam district, Northern Uganda. World Vision Uganda engaged with 60 smallholder farmers to improve their skills on field agronomic practices for soyabean and groundnut production using a farmer field school approach. Using small demonstration plots, the participating farmers learned about responses of improved groundnut varieties SERENUT 5 and SERENUT 6 to P-fertilizer and gypsum over the two seasons of 2013.

Kilombero Valley, located in south-central Tanzania, is a major rice production area with smallholder rice schemes occupying about 2,080 square kilometers. Rice production is largely based on rain-fed lowland cropping systems, where rice is grown over the wet season, and field left fallow over the dry season. Demographic growth and increased demand for land are forcing many farmers to intensify their rice production systems. Declining fallow length and increasing number of crops before leaving the land to extended fallow significantly reduce yield.

N2Africa and the Humid Tropics

On 29^th July 2014, the N2Africa DRC team attended a workshop at Bodega hotel to plan activities for the Mega Program Humid Tropics. Many organizations and their partners¹ joined this meeting to familiarize themselves with the activities undertaken by every program or project, to detect the complementarities between these projects/programs and to identify the gaps to be covered for the East of DR Congo.

During the long rains season (March – July 2014), 5 demo plots were established in the Northern province of Rwanda in collaboration with N2Africa partner DRD and farmers’ associations and individual farmers as well, with the objective of promoting the best method of staking and the use of inoculants on climbing bean. Results have showed a good response to inoculants in all sites and on all varieties used.

In Kenya the five main objectives are 1) expanding awareness of BNF technologies, 2) dissemination of proven BNF and grain legume production technologies, 3) conduct training in BNF technologies, 4) design field demonstrations of N2Africa best practice that are conducted by others, and 5) backstop Kenya’s inoculant industry. Here is a brief description of our approach to each objective.

Expanding awareness of BNF technologies

• A second demand driven training-of-trainers workshop on harvesting and post-harvest management of legumes was conducted in May 2014 in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security’s Department of Agricultural Research Services (Crop Storage). Twenty-five extension workers comprising of 21 men and 4 women were trained.
• A Stakeholder Conference hosted by N2Africa-Malawi was held on the 5^th of June 2014, in Lilongwe, Malawi.

During the period June-September, N2Africa activities in Zimbabwe focused on local level value addition of grain legumes through nutrition workshops that involved mostly women farmers and dissemination of project technologies at both ward and district agricultural shows, which are annual events. These activities were held in all the five districts where N2Africa is implementing activities, in line with N2Africa’s increased dissemination of technologies thrust.

Efforts of the government and development partners have stirred the interest of soybean production among farmers in Tanzania. The crop that is mainly cultivated for human consumption, utilization in animal feeds, soil fertility improvement and as source of income has increased in demand over the recent years.

Research on the use of Rhizobia inoculants has been conducted in Africa since 1950s. However, the technology has not been widely applied by farmers on the continent. In Kenya, wide-scale adoption of this innovation among the smallholder farmers is still low. The aim of this study was to examine factors that drive the use of BIOFIX^® Rhizobia inoculant, a product of Kenya, and its profitability in smallholder farms. Data were collected from 210 soybean (Glycine max) farmers in western Kenya.