FARMER REGISTRATION - A NECESSARY TOOL FOR PLANNING

Farmer registration is a prerequisite for e-extension services

"I woke up one morning and found my farm had been attacked by army worms. I tried to get rid of them manually but it was too much work for me. So I phoned our camp officer who came with the chemicals and treated my field…Through my mobile phone, I can reach my camp officer wherever he is and I’m able to get quick solutions to whatever problem I have.”  

This scenario narrated by Chiponde Kunda a small scale farmer in Luapula underway is gradually becoming a common phenomenon in rural farming communities. More and more farmers like are able to maintain linkages with their extension service workers via the mobile phone.

Mr. Kunda’s situation is an example of the benefits of electronic extension services - often called e-extension services. These services employ the use of technology such as a mobile phones and the internet among others, to make research and extension services more accessible to farmers more especially those located in remote parts of the country.

The Performance Enhancement Program (PEP) II is a European Union-funded project that aims to increase the service delivery of selected government ministries.

In the agricultural sector, PEP II is collaborating with the Ministries of Agriculture and; Fisheries and Livestock to enhance their capacity in delivering efficient extension services to farmers. Extension services is the most important starting point in determining the outputs of both fore-mentioned ministries.

According to PEP II working document, the recommended extension worker to farmer ratio should be 1:400. In Zambia, however, the extension worker to farmer ratio currently stands at 1:890 according to the Department of Agriculture. Though this is a significant reduction from the 1:1900 ratio recorded in 2011, as a result of the recruitment of about 600 extension workers, the current ratio indicates that extension workers are still overwhelmed.

E-extension, therefore, is an effective tool that the government and PEP II are working to implement on a large scale in order to enhance efficient service delivery.

However, in order to serve clients well, there is need to know how many are in need of a service. Hence the improvement of extension services begins with comprehensive farmer registration.

Farmer registration involves establishing a data base of farmers and the type of agriculture that are involved in ie crop and/or livestock with a view of assessing their needs and consequently enabling accurate planning by policy makers.

With accurate statistics at hand, e-extension services can also be better tailored to the varied needs of the farmers.

Southern and Luapula provinces are PEP II’s current project areas and hence the impetus of farmer exercise is being conducted in those provinces. Provincial Agricultural Coordinator for Luapula, Godwin Chate, explains that once farmer registration is complete, planning and in turn e-extension services would be more accurately conducted.

“The idea behind this farmer registration is to reach out to as many farmers as possible in terms of information sharing…For instance we have Fall Army Worms in the Province it would be a very good initiative to use the e-extension to inform the farmers, for instance, that we have received chemicals,” Mr. Chate said

From his explanation, it can be seen that farmer registration is a prerequisite for effective e-extension services. In recent years, farmer registration has been limited to small scale farmers with a view to enable their access to the Farmer-Input Support Program (FISP). But the agricultural sector involves other farmers outside the small scale farming bracket who are equally significant in enhancing agricultural production and productivity. These too are also in need in extension services tailored to their needs.

As such, the farmer registration will be a comprehensive exercise that will involve the documentation of all farmers be they commercial, emergent or small scale farmers.

The recent invasion of Fall Army Worms in some provinces including Luapula have brightened the spotlight on the necessity of farmer registration.

Lloyd Hamfwiti is the camp officer for Kabunda area in Mansa. He supervises farmers in an area that is among those that have been attacked by Fall Army Worms.

“As a camp we were given 10ltrs of the chemicals to [address the challenges of] army worms and now we had to share that 10ltrs into 100mls per farmer [in] trying to cater for about 100 farmers in equal amounts” Mr. Hamfwiti said.

In consideration of this, farmer registration is an important data base building exercise that will ensure cost-effective and evidence based planning. It is also an avenue that would enable the creation and expansion of benefits to both the farmers and the extension service workers. 

 “With the coming up of PEP II in the issue of farmer registration - that will help the government to plan and help us know how many farmers need our services in our area unlike the previous scenario where we would rely only on FISP .This time we’re registering everyone who is involved in farming activities in our camp areas,” Mr. Hamfwiti added.

In a bid to facilitate the farmer registration exercise in the targeted province, PEP II is supporting camp officers with resources such as fuel and monies for data bundles in order to submit farmers via mobile phones. The Project is also in the process of procuring new Android tablets that will be used by extension service workers to record and immediately send farmers’ details to a central data entry server.

The Project aims to register 2 million farmers countrywide with a target of 250,000 farmers from Luapula and it is hope that the farmer registration will in turn enable the establishment of efficient e-extension services.