LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-The country’s Centre for Agricultural Transformation (CAT) has drilled 80 field officers in access to agricultural technologies, finance and markets to increase production in local farmers.
Trained field officers are expected to impart local farmers on the same to maximize production to enhance their productivity and resilience to climate change.
Through the series of trainings, CAT is specifically drilling farmers, lead farmers and field workers access to the different technologies under five value chains, soybean, groundnuts, cassava, banana, and sunflower.
Speaking after a three-day training of trainers at Mponela in Dowa, CAT Director of Market Services Curthubet Lunduka said the training is aligned to supporting the government’s Malawi 2063 which looks at promoting agriculture productivity and commercialization.
“The training covered issues on financial literacy and modalities for accessing loans. We expect each one of the field workers to train 10 lead farmers. And collectively, that’s 800 lead farmers.
“Each of the lead farmers is going to train 20 or 25 local farmers, and at the end of the day, we are targeting almost 20,800 follower farmers as well as lead farmers across five districts including Kasungu, Dowa, Lilongwe, Salima, and Nkhotakota,” assures Lunduka.
In his remark, Kenneth Chaula, Deputy Director of Extension Services in the Ministry of Agriculture lauded CAT for supporting local farmers with agriculture technologies skills to produce more amid effect of climate change.
“We expect that the graduates to build the capacity of lead farmers from production up to marketing. Through the training we have seen calculated skills in terms of in terms of finance, how farmers can access finance,” says Chaula.
He added, “What cat has done here to build the capacity of different frontline staff from the different partners is a significant contribution to well-trained flamers who will be able to provide the much needed Extension Service.
“This is the way of contributing to the government goal where every farmer is supposed to access quality and demand-driven Extension Service”.
One of the trained field workers, Esther Keturo, from Nsitu Extension Planning Area (EPA) applauded the training saying is timely particularly on access to the market for produce.
With financial support from Global Action to End Smoking through the Agricultural Transformation Initiative (ATI), CAT has been conducting series of Bootcamp trainings to farmers including value-chained crops, market access, Agricultural Technology, Innovation and others.
