Soil School
Soil School courses
In 2009 farmers in Taveuni was invited to a Mini Summit in Mua Research Station organized by Taveuni Agriculture Extension and South Pacific Community (SPC).
Highlights from the summit
- Highest rate of deforestation in Fiji.
- Unsustainable land use, decline in soil fertility
- high use of chemical sprays and conventional fertilizers.
- water catchment problems.
Some of the farmers decided to do something about it and Tei Tei Taveuni (TTT) was born.
Our first project was “Soil Schools”. We got the idea after meeting Mike Smith from Organic Matter Foundation (OMF) in Australia (at the time he worked for a fertilizer company in Australia, who sold fertilizers to Agchem in Suva). He first introduced us to more biological fertilizers in a presentation we had arranged in Somosomo for farmers on the Island. During the tea break he was telling us about soil courses he held for Australian farmers. We immediately asked him if we could make courses in Taveuni for farmers and he was interested.
We started to develop the concept of Soil School – The first one was part funded by SPC and Ministry of Agriculture (MPI) with Venue, Catering and accommodation. To be able to continue with Soil Schools we approached UNDP SGPfor funding for 5 more courses and Mike Smith as the Lecture and we asked the MPI to continue to fund Venue, Catering and Accommodation.
Mike Smith started to develop and prepare soil school materials for the courses. After each courses the materials were developed by OMF & TTT to be much more understandable for farmers and with much more localized samples and illustrations.
The Soil Schools consisted of-
- 2 days basic course
- 2 days advance course
- 6 days with farm visits in between and after the basic and advance course where soil tools where used and soil samples were taken and sent to Australia for analysing and set ups of Demo plots around the Island. The soil samples were used in advance course to teach farmers to understand how to read them and use them as a tool.
Tei Tei Taveuni is thankful to SPC, MPI, UNDP SGP and OMF – without their support we could not have made the Soil Schools.
In 2018 Tei Tei Taveuni made under the headline “Farmer to Farmer exchange –a soil school for farmers working with FRIENDS.
3 groups of farmers - one in Nalawa one in Vito and one in Tuwa participated in 2 modules - 1module of 2 day for each group and 2 month later another 2 days for each group.