Have you ever wondered how a particular curriculum came to existence or how the module went through? Yes, it is a process. A process of collecting data so as a goal can be drafted and a gathering of various potential people to see the goal through and this case a Curriculum for Agricultural Colleges.
SAT, Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania. A non-profit organization that spreads the word and practices of sustainable agriculture in Tanzania. Based in Morogoro, they bear the flagship of organic farming and have they farmers trained to adopt the organic farming practices, while helping these farmers place into market the produce they come up with after the harvest.
Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania in collaboration with, 4 experts from Ministry of Agriculture, 2 from NACTE and 36 from agricultural colleges through the CISTI Project have gathered at the FTC in Vianzi, to see through the accomplishment of their common goal, an update of the current curriculum.
Arriving at Vianzi on October the 14th ,the experts went through the comments and information gathered from the practitioners and experts in the agricultural field, based on the demands of the skill set and how these skills are supplied to establish a rapport on how to go through with the whole process of reviewing the curriculum.
A team play in smaller panels and sometimes as one large group, came up with learning outcomes, supporting outcomes and sub supporting outcomes. The sub supporting outcomes are then merged to come up with the modules which are a core of this review.
Looking forward to the curriculum update, these experts would skillfully match the skill set extracted from the modules created to the demand of the job market. In which they would have catered for the skill set that lacked when the old curriculum was used and will have help achieve 50% of the knowledge expansion in the organic agriculture and its practices.
The review of this curriculum is taken as a high-end process that would bring remarkable changes in the agricultural sector in terms of the education provided to the devotees of agriculture and the practical skills instilled in them and having these skills earned cater for the demands in the agricultural field, cooperatives and gender related issues, while securing income and alleviating food insecurity.
The future of agricultural education looks brighter, thanks to the efforts invested by SAT and the CISTI which are funded by Liechtensteinischer Entwicklungsdienst (LED) by 2022 more than 9000 agricultural devotees are expected to be no longer tied up to the outdated practices in the current and modern world.
The SAT employees, our board members and our CEO’s all stood in “formation”. A long uniform line, full of eager and excited faces. The SAT employees all sharply wearing our grey polo shirts with the SAT logo boldly and proudly embedded on the left-hand side. Our CEO’s, stood right at the front of the line. Just as excited for this moment, that we had all been looking forward too.
A warm welcome: The Permanent Secretary greets our staff
The date is September 25th 2020, just a little after 13.00 hrs, we are all gathered at Vianzi, in the Mvomero district, a 20km from Morogoro City. Our mission? To welcome the Permanent Secretary of The Ministry of Agriculture Mr. Gerald M. Kusaya, to share with him our story, show him our facilities and have him assist us with opening new buildings at our SAT Training Centre. Mr. Kusaya’s visit to us represents a chance to not only show our progress thus far, but an assurance and a confidence that we are walking arm in arm with the Government in our goal for a 100% organic future.
We, SAT are a non-governmental organization in Tanzania founded in 2009, headquartered in Morogoro. Our target is to ensure the majority of farmers are using acknowledged agro-ecological methods to improve their livelihoods. Which will then aid in the conservation of our environment and ultimately reduce pressure on natural resources.
Our SAT Training Centre, in Vianzi is expanding, with a set of new buildings almost complete. The set of buildings will include a new head office and dormitories among other areas. They will mainly be targeted for use in our CISTI or Curriculum Implementation Support for Training Institutes project. CISTI is a project aimed at producing graduates in line with the country’s needs, as it relates to organic agriculture among other things. Thus far we are in collaboration with 29 Universities, have trained 83 tutors and completed 5 compendiums specific to this project.
In addition to the CISTI project we also run the Uluguru Spice Project (USP) where the target is for the majority of Tanzanian small-scale farmers to benefit from organic farming practices which reduce poverty, increase climate resilience and reduce the pressure on the environment. Another notable project we work on is Farmers and Pastoralists Collaboration (FCP), which aims to use a circular economy approach to bring the two conflicting parties together (farmers and pastoralists), building peace through integrated agroecological methods.
We believe continued investment and development of The SAT Training Centre will help us to achieve our aim of building towards an agroecological future, equipping farmers and others with the right knowledge which they themselves will go on to spread.
Fruits of our labor: Our CEO’s show the Permanent Secretary our new buildings.
Mr. Kusaya maintained a look of awe and admiration, as we told him our story, showed him our facilities and the little self-sustainable “village”, we had built in what seemingly looks like a random and remote part of the country. The community we have built lies in stark contrast to what was there before…Nothing. Alex, our Operations CEO, fondly shared the story of how years ago when he was exploring possible locations to start building, he stumbled upon this very place and upon telling the locals his plans of transforming it, they laughed and said he must have got some “Jua Kali” on the way here!
Story-time: Our Operations CEO Alex shares with the attendees SAT’s history and our future plans.
As far as we have come, we at SAT still do have a long way to go to making the SAT Training Centre, in Vianzi, the organic educational hub we envision it to be. We mentioned to Mr. Kusaya our lack of electricity and water at Vianzi as well as the poor road infrastructure that leads to our Centre. He assured us and all our stakeholders present, that he takes our needs very seriously and will address them as best as he can. Insisting that we will always have a friend in the Government.
As such we look forward to working arm in arm with our key partners; Biovision, LED, ADA, Land Vorarlberg as well as the government of the United Republic of Tanzania towards building a 100% organic future for Tanzania.
A new beginning: The Permanent Secretary flanked by our CEO’s admires the foundation stone he just unveiled.
We are living in a digital age. The internet has become a key part of our lives; it determines how we interact with one another, how we do business and how we plan our lives among many other things. The key for any business in this environment, is to leverage these new technologies to our benefit and to the benefit of our stakeholders.
A farmer making use of her phone to access key market information.
At Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania our vision is for the majority of farmers to use acknowledged agroecological farming methods to improve their livelihoods, conserve the environment and reduce pressure on natural resources. To reach this goal effectively, digitization must be a key element in our approach.
Digitization at SAT largely depends on the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) component established at SAT. The SAT ICT component is a component introduced by SAT to solve the problems that face smallholder farmers such as lack of markets, lack of information, lack of timely support and assistance in problem solving. SAT ICT employs various tools to ensure that farmers focus more on production which will ultimately lead to an increase their profits.
Farmers always need to make key decisions such as what to grow, how to grow, when to grow, where to sell, what quality is required, when to sell, what price to charge etc… Strengthening our smallholder farmers’ access to timely and accurate information improves their productivity as well their bargaining power and understanding of marketing functions which improves farmers’ market share.
A snapshot from the Machosauti application
The tools used by SAT ICT include mobile applications and services that help us, help farmers. The first stage involved in the digitization process is training our farmers on how to use smartphones and applications that are essential in information sharing. Some of the mobile applications used include WhatsApp and Machosauti. How did you learn how to use a smartphone? Let me guess, you played around? That is exactly the way we train our farmers through engaging them in interactive games where they use WhatsApp and other software to solve problems, such as finding the best prices or the best solution for a farming problem.
WhatsApp is a mobile application which is used for general communication purposes and media. Media such as text, pictures, audio, and videos can all be shared using this platform through the internet. First, we wanted all our farmers to share their challenges. That almost did not happen. Instead farmers started by sharing their successes, which, turned out to be a positive in itself, as it motivated other farmers to copy their ecological farming methods. However, there are still some burning questions out in the field.
Machosauti is another mobile application developed by Dr. Eugenio Tiselli and financed by SWISSAID in Tanzania. It involves media exchange in the form of text, audio and pictures as well as a webpage interface for interaction between users of the application. Here farmers are invited to upload challenges which later will be responded to by other farmers and technical experts from SAT. The benefit of this app is that farmers can later access all the solutions since they are saved for long-term use. This is its benefit when compared to WhatsApp.
However, for quick knowledge exchange WhatsApp is still the unbeatable favorite for small scale farmers. An example of one group managed on this app is ‘’Wakulima Kilimo Hai’’ (in English the “Organic Farmers”). This WhatsApp group includes 43 farmer groups, seven marketing scouts, and a plenty of SAT facilitators who act as technical consultants. In total, we have 93 farmer groups on WhatsApp, reaching, at present, more than 2740 farmers.
Apart from learning the best organic farming methods, farmers are also longing for marketing information. Currently we have market scouts from seven different markets named Tawa, Mkuyuni, Kinole, Mwazo Mgumu, Mjini, Kariakoo and Kiroka. They are responsible for collecting market information on price variation for different products (spices, vegetables, fruits, pulses, and cereal products) on a weekly basis. Market scouts are provided with smart phones, enabling them to collect market information and share it with farmer groups. We at SAT wanted to ensure that prices for up to 40 products are efficiently shared from several markets, the first option was to do so through an app. Due to high costs, however, we decided to use an alternative way which is a mix of analog and digital components building on the existing software; WhatsApp.
The approach is simple but effective; market scouts use a printed template which they fill out on the market day with all the respective prices. From the piece of paper, a picture is made, and this is the point where analog turns digital. The information is then shared on the WhatsApp where it can be accessed by hundreds of farmers. Farmers immediately see the current prices and can call the market scout to ensure there is demand for their products. SAT collects the data and builds a database of years’ worth of information which helps to advise farmers as best as possible. Our experience has shown that prices can fluctuate highly between markets. Therefore, sometimes incurring a higher transport cost can lead to much more profit through selling it at a more profitable market. We, at SAT, are committed to improving and expanding by adding more market scouts to the Dar salaam and Dodoma markets.
Financial services is another key element of our SAT ICT component. Smallholder farmers are a major part of the population in Tanzania as it relates to the agricultural sector. Unfortunately, they are usually excluded from formal financial services. Digital financial services via mobile money technology represent an opportunity to enable financial inclusion among this group.
One avenue for facilitating this is to digitize the agriculture value chains that some smallholder farmers are a part of. This provides a secure movement of the cash the farmers are paid through mobile money services. This ensures their security as well as preventing the need for farmers to move from their localities to receive payments. This system is faster, easier, cheaper, and more secure than the conventional system where they needed to move, incurring more costs in the process. Currently mobile money is used as the payment method for farmers who are producing various products. Briefly summarized this is all revolutionary technology which allows coops and farmer groups to work on a highly transparent level which is key to success.
With all these initiatives it is necessary to know where we stand. We measure our impact through collecting data with using the online app KoboToolBox. By using this technology, we have all information on the “cloud” ready to be analyzed with our statistical software.
As technologies and digitization continues to grow and shape our world. We will look to grow with it, prioritizing our farmers and their needs, leading us all to a future with is not only digital but also 100% organic.
Mexico, Denmark, Scotland, Germany, India, Israel and Tanzania. What do those countries have in common? The answer is not obvious and does take some digging. Or in this case farming.
All the above-mentioned countries have organizations or people who are finalists in the One World Award (OWA). The OWA is the most prestigious international accolade from the Organic movement. It centers on rewarding innovative activities in ecological, social and economic sustainability.
Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT) our humble but rapidly growing, organic movement situated in the warm heart of Africa, holds the continents flag high as one of the seven finalists.
The grand prize? Money, recognition and the chance to take home, Mother Nature, or in this case, “Lady Obert”, a bold statue which features the earth on top of a figure of a woman. A striking image which will be awarded to the most daring and most dynamic organization which promotes sustainability. A description which was tailormade for SAT.
We, SAT are a non-governmental organization in Tanzania founded in 2009 headquartered in Morogoro. Our mission? Ensuring the majority of farmers are using acknowledged agro-ecological methods to improve their livelihoods. Which will aid in conservation of our environment and ultimately reduce pressure on natural resources.
Bernward Geier, OWA coordinator and chairman of the OWA jury, came to Tanzania for a three day visit as part of the selection process. He spent his three days touring our various facilities, meeting our employees and of course meeting the most important people of all; Our Farmers.
As part of his visit Bernward, gave the SAT staff a lecture about what the award means and delivered a call to action. A call to dream big about a 100% organic future for everyone.
“How many of you think Tanzania will be 100% organic by 2050?”, he asked. A tough question, with which some were hesitant to commit too. His response to his own question was damning yet inspiring. Warning us that we, and the world do not have that much time, at best we must execute change within 10 years. A challenge which we all rose to and accepted with roaring cries of “Kilimo Hai!”
By the end of his three day visit we had showed him our farming techniques, shared our dreams, practiced our culture together and taught him our dance moves. Every step of the way Bernward, and Daniel (his cameraman), joined in on our fun and our lessons, while sharing many of their own. While we wished them a heartfelt goodbye, we are consoled by the idea that we will reunite on a stage in February 2021 to collect and to protect “Lady Obert”.
You can learn about our farming practices by registering for our Farming Training Courses. Click here for further details.
About ten years ago Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania was born through the initiative of a few university students. Since then SAT has changed a lot. Today around 80 employees contribute to the successful work of the organization. Together with small-scale farmers and other stakeholders in the agricultural field we promote agroecological practices which allow farmers and pastoralists to live a decent life and reduce the pressure on natural resources and ultimately mitigate climate change. Having grown in the number of areas we are working in and having developed as an organization we think it is now also time to change our visual appearance. For this reason, we designed a new logo.
However, our growth and success would not have been possible without the support of many. This is why we would also like to say thank you to you today for accompanying and supporting us on our way. Asanteni sana!
This year, the annual joint meeting of the 29 Agriculture Training Institutes (ATIs), both private and public, took place in Morogoro from 29th to 30th of June. For Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT) this meeting also meant an important next step for the Curriculum Implementation Support for Training Institutes (CISTI) project, as presentations about the project’s progress were made to the Permanent Secretary (PS) of the Ministry of Agriculture and all ATI Principles. Through the CISTI project SAT supported the coordination and planning of the meeting.
On June 29th, the meeting was an internal one between the PS and all Principles of the 14 Ministry of Agriculture Training Institutes (MATIs). Presentations and discussions took place on the matter of the current status of the curriculum implementation, successes and how challenges can be tackled, but also on how MATIs can become financially independent in the future.
On June 30th, the actual joint meeting of MATIs and PATIs (15 Private Agriculture Training Institutes) took place. This meeting focused on the direction of CISTI and on a sustainable review and implementation of the curricula. For the first time, the new Permanent Secretary from the Ministry of Agriculture (since March 2020), Gerald Musabila Kusaya, has attended and chaired the meeting. At the high table the following people took their seats:
Dr. Wilhelm Mafuru (Director of Training, Extension Services and Research Division, DTER)
Janet Maro (SAT, CEO Programme)
Hilda T. Kinanga (Director of Administration for Human Ressources Management, DAHRM)
Moses Kabogo (Lutheran World Relief, Senior Country Program Manager, Tanzania)
Mahija Waziri (National Council for Technical Education, NACTE)
Presentations about the CISTI project progress
For our CISTI project, this meeting was an important meeting, as the project has entered its second phase. After a successful year 2019, where it was in a pilot phase, the project is now fully ongoing for the next three years (2020-2022). It aims to support 29 Agricultural Training Institutes, both public and private, to successfully implement and integrate organic farming, gender in agriculture, environmental management, cooperatives in agriculture and communication skills in the new training curriculum for agriculture production on certificate and diploma levels.
During the meeting, our Project Manager Mgeta Daud presented about the expectations and the roles of ATIs. Afterwards, Kashindye Salum, the Assistant Project Manager, presented the preliminary report on the labour market needs survey to inform the review of six curricula which are: a) crop production, b) horticulture, c) irrigation, d) land use planning, e) food production and nutrition, and f) agro-mechanisation. This report was based on a survey SAT carried out among employers, graduates, farmers and professionals which involved personal visits and online questionnaires. Godfrey Edward, the Curriculum Officer at the Ministry of Agriculture, presented twice: first, about the sustainable strategy for reviewing curricula used by ATIs; and second, about the proposal by the Minister of Agriculture of introducing a one-year internship for the students to gain practical experience. Afterwards, a fruitful discussion on these topics took place.
Impressions from the Joint Meeting of the Agricultural Training Institutes in Morogoro
2020 Update for CISTI project
As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, new ICT equipment is being purchased in preperation to implement the Distance E-Learning Training. One set of equipment for every ATI, one set for the SAT HQ and one for the Ministry. This offers plenty of new opportunities, as it allows for some of the trainings to take place online. In the future, this will save resources, both in time and money, as people do not have to travel far distances from all ATIs spread across all Tanzania. At the moment, compendiums and manuals are being developed for new modules: Principles of Co-operatives in Agriculture for National Technical Award level 5 and Basic Communication Skills for National Technical Award level 4.
Training farmers in organic agriculture is great, but building up awareness about organic food and creating new markets has as well importance.
(Alexander Wostry, SAT)
A new step for SAT
Tuesday is a busy day in the SAT Organic Shop. Small-scale farmers drop off fresh vegetables and fruits which have been pre-ordered a few days before. However, this time the products will not stay in Morogoro, their final destination is still a few hours away. After being carefully sorted as well as washed, the fruits and vegetables are packed into big cartoon boxes using as much as possible organic packaging material such as dry gras and banana leaves. In an average week the shop staff packs six big boxes with over 25 different fruits and vegetables (bananas, oranges, pawpaws, avocados, tomatoes, onions, fresh ginger, carrots, amaranths…) worth a total value of around TSH 500.000. Once every product on the order list is ticked off, the boxes are brought to the Morogoro bus station to be sent to Dar es Salaam. At the moment there are all in all three deliveries per week and even more often, if the demand is higher.
SAT Organic Shop
Box full of vegetables to be sent to Dar es Salaam
This is a new step for us as an organization, but also for our organic small-scale farmers. You can now get SAT’s organic, healthy and fresh products in Dar es Salaam without even ever leaving your house. We have partnered with I Am Organic which is currently located within Wild Flour Café and Bakery. I Am Organic offers a weekly fruits basket service, whereby they deliver a standard or family size basket full of our fresh organic fruits to your doorstep every Wednesday. You can sign up for the weekly service via the Wild Flour App or if you prefer you can simply walk into the café and pick out your fruits – they are located on Chole Road at the Slipway junction in Masaki. They also sell our organic vegetables and other products, so make sure you visit them.
The foundation stone for where we are today – that we can now sell our organic products even in Dar es Salaam – was laid already a few years ago. We were looking into possibilities to connect our organic small-scale farmers to the local and national market, where organic products could be sold for a premium price while never losing its traceability: Consumers should know where the products they buy come from. We started with a small SAT Organic Shop here in Morogoro in 2012. Scaling up and improving this market link was always on the agenda since then. Further important steps were taken within the Farmers and Pastoralists Collaboration project in 2017, when we strengthened the whole vegetable value chain with the kind support of Biovision Foundation for Ecological Development and LED Liechtenstein Development Service. The next step in the future would be another organic shop in Dodoma to meet the fast-growing demand of organic producers and consumers.
However, the idea is bigger than “just” creating a linkage to the market for our farmers. By selling organic products we also want to raise awareness and sensitize customers for agroecological farming and sustainable agriculture – and this cooperation now allows us to do exactly that by selling the products of our farmers in Dar with I AM ORGANIC, which is a project by Coral Tree Ltd. in collaboration with Wild Flour, TOAM, SAT and SWISSAID TZ. The latter provides the financial support. This technically well-equipped consortium shows that cooperation and cocreation are promising approaches to scale organic agriculture in Tanzania.
We want to offer and promote wholesome food products that have minimal environmental impact, are authentic and traceable, that use the best of traditional know how, are healthy, simple, innovative and artisan. We believe that through this partnership with Swissaid, SAT and TAOM, we can achieve that.
A lecture hall at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) full of young scientists developing ideas for their Bachelor and Master thesis. So far it would be nothing special if it weren´t for a few rather unusual guests: farmers and pastoralists of the Morogoro region. Each year the Workshop for Participatory Research Design connects farmers or pastoralists with young researchers and thus initiates a new cycle of the Farmer Centred Research Programme (FCRP), which emerged a few years ago from the close collaboration of SAT and SUA. Farmers and pastoralists present their current challenges and offer their local knowledge. From there students use their research skills to find solutions for their challenges together with the farmers.
Shakaile Kolea, a pastoralist from Mkajuni village, speaks about challenges at the Workshop for Participatory Research Design.
The problem of the fall army worms
Martha Makumba, a young woman, is one among eleven bachelor students from SUA who received a grant through the FCRP in 2018/2019 to conduct her research. After farmers expressed their problem of fall army worms being a big obstacle to their productivity in the 5th Workshop for Participatory Research Design, she decided to look further into that issue. Her research had the overall goal to assess the resistance of local maize seed varieties to the invasion of fall army worms and the use of environmentally friendly pesticides as control mechanisms. During the following weeks she observed that the improved seed variety called “Tumbili” performed better compared to farmer managed seeds and that neem powder worked better as an organic pesticide than moringa. Although Martha Makumba recommended to use improved seed varieties one farmer decided to extend the research.
Farmers contribute to research findings
Mwombeck Cleophace is a member of the Tushikamane group in Kimambila village which was formed in 2017 in the course of the Farmers and Pastoralists Collaboration Project. He is also one of the Farmer to Farmer facilitators who pass on their knowledge to other farmers. Mwombeck Cleophace decided to extend the research in his village by visiting ten farms with improved seeds and ten farms with farmer managed seeds. Contrarily to Martha Makumba, he observed that improved seeds were much more affected by fall army worms compared to farmer managed seeds.
And the research goes on…
To us, we can draw two conclusions from this: First, it shows us how engaged and motivated our farmers are beyond our project activities. They can see that this research helps them to create a sustainable and well working agricultural system at their farms. Secondly, it also shows that different research analysis can provide different results. Another sign that we need to invest more time into long-term research to better understand the specifics of the seeds and their resilience towards the fall army worm.
We are happy to announce that the training season at our Farmer Training Centre has started.
On our organically managed farm in Vianzi we have plenty for you to experience. In fourteen different courses you can learn hands-on agroecological farming as well as value addition practices. In our opinion “learning by doing” is the key for a successful training experience, therefore we use a participatory training approach in all of our courses. For the first time we also offer a course on post-harvest management.
SAT is a leader in the field of ecological organic agriculture in Tanzania and has a lot of experience in capacity building and training. Our organization is internationally recognized and appreciated. Last year, almost 800 farmers, pastoralists and representatives of NGOs or governmental insitutions attended our courses.
This year’s training schedule includes the following courses
Date
Course
29th June – 3rd July 2020 5th October – 9th October 2020 23rd November – 27th Novemeber 2020
For further information and the application form please click on the respective links. Please note that our training schedule is subject to change due to variable course attendance.
Additionally, we also offer tailor-made courses for NGOs, educational institutions,… If you are interested, please get in contact with us and we are happy to discuss your ideas.
Currently, the demand for cardamom on the market is very high. Therefore, Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT) offered an agroecological training on the spice. This capacity building session in the field took place to show how the plant can be intercropped in an agroforestry system so that the slopes of the Uluguru Mountains remain or become again protected from erosion.
Mkuyuni, a small village in the Ruvu river area of the Uluguru Mountains, is not easy to reach. The drive from the SAT headquarter in Morogoro up in the mountains was already hampered due to the rain season and muddy roads. After the car was parked, another 20-minute walk was needed to reach the remote demonstration plot. This provides a brief yet important glimpse on the obstacles, such as difficult market access and poor infrastructure, small-scale farmers have to face in addition to the harsh working conditions in the mountains.
Group picture in the rain
Project manager Joel Paulo explains the outline of the training
Dr. Mgembe explainshow to grow and harvest cardamom
No matter if the sun was shining or rain was falling, farmers of Mkuyuni and the surrounding areas were very keen on learning about the production of cardamom. As part of the Uluguru Spice Project, this capacity building training was attended by 87 farmers from 10 different farmers groups. Two government extension officers were also present to ensure that knowledge and expertise on the highly demanded spice remains beyond the duration of the project. All attended farmers are from SAT trained peer-to-peer trainers who combined will share the knowledge with a total network of 1500 farmers over the next three years. In addition to that, we also provide further possibilities to gain knowledge on spices at our Organic Spice Production Course.
As the cardamom plant is rather new here as a potential cash crop, SAT invited Dr. Elias Mgembe from the Sokoine University of Agriculture as an external trainer to provide the needed expertise on how to grow, foster and harvest the spice. Only a few farmers have already cardamom plants on their fields, for many of them it is still a very new plant. However, a very promising one: The demand is very high and the supply not sufficient. Thus, farmers can get a very high profit from selling cardamom, and from the other way around the soil is protected through this intercropped perennial plant.
Dr. Mgembe explains the cardamom plant
The cardamom plant: similar to turmeric and ginger and yet different
The training was held on a demonstration plot so that Dr. Mgembe could provide very practical, hands-on explanations. Actually, for an untrained eye it is not that easy to detect the inflorescence. It is quite a big plant, which belongs to the same family as turmeric and ginger, with actual capsules growing on a small part above the ground. In addition, there are three different types of cardamom plants with different needs and aspects to consider. Generally, a few characteristics can be noted, which the plant needs or has:
High humidity
Shade (50-60%), thus intercropping is helpful and it is suited for agroforestry
Short roots, thus a highly nutritious top soil layer is needed
Seedlings for propagation of plant (danger of transferring diseases too)
Bees for pollination
The cardamom plant
The inflorescence of the cardamom plant
Capacity building: Handpicking ensures the best quality
Often, farmers harvest too early because they need the income from selling the spice, leading to a loss of quality. The cardamom plant needs to be harvested not only manually, but the almost ripe capsules need to be handpicked just before maturity. Thus, the spice needs a lot of work and attention. Yet, the process continues beyond harvesting as the right storage and drying process also plays an important role for the quality of the final product.
Cardamom is only the latest addition to the trainings which are part of the USP project to increase capacity building on the spices. By doing so, SAT provides the small-scale farmers with a strengthened value chain. It focusses on direct processing at the farm and product development and market access via SAT facilities. SAT pays the farmers a premium price (at least 10% more), which is mutually agreed on with the producers themselves and leads to a more secure income.
Facilitator Salma Yassim explains the cardamom capsules
The farmers showed a lot of interest, many questions were asked
Community building and knowledge exchange as part of the USP project
Back to the training: The many questions the farmers had for Dr. Mgembe were a clear sign that there is a need and interest on the cultivation of cardamom. Furthermore, during lunch the different farmer groups could connect and share experiences on agroecological methods, another important aspect in the work of SAT. To foster community exchange and participation of farmers is an essential objective of SAT’s vision to grow sustainable agriculture in Tanzania.
