Smallholder Farmers Receive Training

Twenty-five smallholder famers from five districts in the Northern Region have been trained on how to use the newly developed Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) Multi-Crop Thresher device for increased production.

The farmers from the Districts of Saboba, Tolon, Chereponi, Mion and the Yendi Municipality as well as artisans were taken through a demonstration on the function of the thresher to help reduce post-harvest loses during threshing to increase farmers' production.

Mr Mawuli Asigbee, Agriculture Program Manager at the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) who spoke during the demonstration in Yendi, urged farmers to adapt to new agricultural technologies and innovations along the soybean value chain to increase production.

He said the integration of soybeans production into the government's flagship programme of Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) calls for farmers to adapt to technologies in order to produce high quality grain to attract high prices as well as increase production.

Mr Asigbee said artisans have been trained to use local materials to manufacture the thresher device for smallholder farmers and that the thresher could be operated manually or electronically powered to its full effect.

The event organized by the CRS is under the USAID Feed the Future Innovation Laboratory for Soybean Value Chain Research (SIL) aimed at post-harvest management of soybeans.

Mr Imoro Hamid Tijani, a farmer said, soybean threshing was a major challenge in soybean production and expressed the hope that the new multi-crop thresher would increase production as well as encourage more farmers into soybean production.

He said the difficulty with threshing of soybeans after harvesting discouraged farmers from producing in larger scales and advised farmers to take up production of other cereal crops rather than soybeans.

'With the introduction of this innovative way of threshing, farmers would be encouraged to go into soybeans production and by this, farmers' income base would increase to enhance their livelihood,' he indicated.

Madam Salifu Munira, a farmer from the Chereponi District, indicated that the new thresher device would help farmers to attain full harvest and prevent post harvest loses.

She said the multi-thresher device reduces the work effort of farmers saying, 'The seeds are always separated from the pods and seed breakages avoided".