Soil School Report and Farm Visits - November 2011

Courses

The basic soil school was held at Mua Research Station in Matei on the 17th-18th of November and the advance soil school was held at Mua Research Station in Matei on the 24th-25th of November.

21 farmers, 2 TTT members, Mike OMF and Geoff AVI attended the basic course.
20 farmers, 3 TTT members, Mike OMF and Geoff AVI attended the advanced course.

TTT had 4 visitors/participants from Kadavu and Vanua Levu from the project “From Ridge to Reef” supervised by The Institute of Applied Science at USP. They participated in the soil school to get some ideas about what to actually do if they wanted to avoid non-sustainable and damaging practices. They were pleased to attend and TTT gave them some Mukuna seeds to grow as green manure in rotation with root crops and yaqona.

TTT conclude that the problem with declining soil fertility and the necessity for more sustainable approaches are widespread. Farmers must be able to make a decent living without destroying soil fertility, their own future livelihood, and food security in general.

TTT’s volunteer, Geoff, participated in the Soil School & farm visits in November to secure continuity between the Soil Schools and the coming 2 years of mentoring.

Farm Visits

TTT have so far established 29 farm groups of 5 farmers .The aim is 40 groups. The groups will be visited once a month by Geoff and plans, problems and solutions about their farm and crops will be discussed in the group on the farms.

Together with our Volunteer Geoff TTT will further develop the concept of farmer training/farm visits/farm solutions.

Another 10-15 demo plots will be established on the farmer’s own land. That many demo plots around Taveuni will give all farmers a possibility to visit the plots. The

demo plots will run continuously for the coming 2 years.

The hands on experience TTT & the farmers will get over the next two years about how to solve the ever occurring problems will be interesting and hopefully have a long term impact on the sustainability

TTT initiated a meeting about lime availability with a number of the stakeholders. At TTT’s suggestion PS Agriculture called a meeting with participants from MPI HQ, Research, Sugar industry, South Pacific Fertilizer, Dairy Industry and the cement factory. The result was a taskforce to look into local affordable lime becoming available for farmers. The cement factory had the equipment, the quarry rights, and a source and is keen to produce. Efforts are made to get the sugar industry to realize the potential the sugar industry's adoption of lime use is essential if volume/affordable prices are to be obtained.

TTT was promised to get lime enough now for our farm groups.

Tei Tei Taveuni would like to thank the donors for making the soil school possible.

Report compiled by Lilian on behalf of TTT.