On Wednesday I went with our pastor, "pastor Billy" to re-visit the rural churches where we had done some FGW training about a month ago. We found the well-watered gardens in generally good shape although bugs had all but destroyed the beans at Namagera. One of the pastor's wives is our first real implementor which is exciting. her garden is doing quite well and there is a marked difference in her garden as opposed to neighboring gardens. Although FGW makes so much sense as a trainer it is a long battle to convince people to actually adapt Farming God's Way as a system. One of the biggest keys to adaptation is to get a few local farmers who are eager to implement. Once their felow villagers see what they are doing and that this is not just magezi muzungu (White man's wisdom) adaptation rates are much higher.Our goal is not just to have high adaptation rates so that we feel useful in our rural work. Higher adaptation rates mean higher yields, lower soil and water losses and an increase of prodoctivity per area. When farmers can use less land for more production then other areas of their farms can be switched over to agro-forestry and animal rearing making the farm much more self-sufficient and profitable. |
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Posted via email from The Sperling's blog
