Amoéba : A different future for girls through sustainable rice growing

Since partnering with Rikolto, DAICO's team has given training to farmers on Magugu rice seed purification and rice quality management, post-harvest handling to reduce post-harvest losses, nutrient use efficiency through soil analysis tests to ascertain what exactly farmers should plant, when and where and the amount of nutrients required for them. It has also carried out a mandatory Integrated Pest Management (IPM), harvesting and post-harvest requirements, quality and standards and Good milling practices training with support of the Tanzania Agriculture Research Institute (TARI) Kilimanjaro Agricultural Training Center (KATC) and Rice council of Tanzania. These trainings have been successful, leading to an increase in production.

As part of this partnership Mary has been involved in the recently released seasonal calendar drawn to assist farmers in aligning their rice growing activities. The calendar solves one of biggest challenges between farmers and extension officers - coordination. It helps with:

• Collective facilitation and farm visits from extension officers like Mary for effective utilization of resources, which lays a foundation for sustainable rice production that Rikolto is advocating for.

• Aligning of farmers' different outlooks on when to plant, what to plant and so on, which was previously difficult to achieve and thus creating overlaps in the process. Whereas some farmers would be sowing, others would be weeding and more harvesting etc. This confusion at the growing stage affected the whole value chain process.

• All farmers accessing help at the same time in case of a pest attack on a paddy field at a particular stage.

• Reducing machinery costs at the harvesting stage through combined harvesting shared amongst farmers.

• Water utilization management by aligning canals and thus reducing water wastage.

• The road infrastructure challenge around the rice farming schemes. Due to unpredictable heavy rains, sometimes the roads are flooded and impassable making individual farmer visits expensive, unreliable and almost impossible. Cropping calendar increases collective access to inputs, services and linkage to markets.

Muungano rice scheme, comprising of 1600 acres and cultivated for a single season a year, on average produces 1920 tons per year of paddy with an approximate of a ton and a quarter per acre (1.2 * 1600). On the other hand, the more preferred (due to location proximity) Mkombozi rice scheme comprising of 450 acres is cultivated for two seasons, one long (Dec - Jun) and one short (Oct - Feb), producing on average 1000 tons of paddy per season. Combined, almost 3000 tons of paddy are produced in Babati's rice schemes, a sixth of the total production for rice in the Magugu ward for the 2018 - 2019 year (17,281 tons).