‘Sustainable Agriculture’ Field Day
A major focus of the Sewalanka Vavuniya District office is to develop sustainable agriculture programs within the area. German Agro Action (GAA) and OXFAM are the current project partners with GAA funding activities in 66 villages and OXFAM funding activities in 8 other villages. The main objectives of the projects are to improve the income of the beneficiaries who are solely dependent on farming activities.
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| Field Day, Vavuniya, August 2003. |
Vavuniya district office held a field day on the 31 August 2003, to improve and share knowledge about sustainable agriculture among the local farmers and our staff. This field day was funded by OXFAM. The Chairman of Sewalanka, Directors of the Agriculture department, staff from OXFAM, agriculture trainers and local farmers took part in the field day..
Local farmers were given the opportunity to address the assembled group to discuss their own experiences with their agricultural activities. This included farmers who had not succeeded in their agricultural ventures, farmers who were struggling with current ventures and farmers who were doing well. After listening to the problems and experiences of the farmers, they formed groups to discuss different aspects of sustainable agriculture. One group discussed the production and marketing of farm products, with the agriculture directors from Vavuniya Agriculture department facilitating the discussion. The other group discussed the problems and difficulties faced by the farmers, with the Director of Seeds from the Government facilitating this group discussion.
After the discussion the Chairman of Sewalanka spoke about his views and experiences in sustainable agriculture. He proposed methods on how to combine the modern agriculture and sustainable agriculture together and help the farmers who are struggling to succeed in their agricultural activities. Further in his speech he mentioned about the ways to improve the income of the farmers. He also mentioned about the goals of the NGO’s regarding improving the income of grass-root level farmers, which is a primary objective of Sewalanka.
After the Chairman’s speech certificates were issued to the agriculture trainers who took part in the two-month training program provided by Sewalanka. Discussions on how to improve organic farming were held after lunch. In this discussion farmers who had successfully used organic farming methods spoke about their experience and gave advice to other farmers on how to improve their farming activities in order to generate more income. All participants then visited a farm in the Koomankulam village, which is giving a good yield by only using organic fertilizers.
The field day was a great success and provided a valuable opportunity for views and experiences to be discussed and shared between the farmers and all interested parties. More importantly, the Vavuniya district government agriculture officers recorded these views and experiences. The field day ended with the vote of thanks form Mr. Janaki Raman, Agronomist, Sewalanka Foundation Vavuniya, who organised the field day.
