FFD2018 Koutiala

Africa RISING Mali
Farmers Field Day
18 October 2018
Koutiala

Event photos available at: https://flic.kr/s/aHskGUzHxT
Introduction
In Koutiala district the farmers field day took place on October 18 2018 at the technology park of M’Pessoba which is located 47 km from Koutiala. The field day was organized by AMEDD and co-chaired by the district governor and the Mayor of M’Pessoba. More than 300 guests comprising farmers’ students, extension workers’ and researchers attended the field day. The guest of honors were the visiting students of Segou University and the Polytechnic Institute of Koutiala. After the welcoming word of the facilitator the chief regional scientist of Africa RISING thanked farmers, extension workers and students for their participation to this key event.
After these words, the governor of Koutiala made a welcoming remark and highlighted the importance of technology dissemination under climate change and overall agriculture development in Mali.
After the speech of introduction, the facilitator announced the program of the day and shared the participants between different groups to increase the participation and interactions levels between scientists and participants of the field day.

Visiting technologies:
The visit of technologies started after the speech and welcome words of the administrative authorities and each technology was presented by field technicians.

The vegetable trials and the dual purpose sorghum were among the demonstrations presented to visitors by technicians backed by lead researchers.

Key moment of the field day was the visit of the demonstration of fodder technology (mucuna pruriens) disseminated by project TAAT demonstrations showcased by ILRI and AMEDD.
After the visit of demonstrations, general discussions were held where participants’ questions’ were answered by research teams. The questions discussed were related to:

• How to get access to the seeds of dual purpose sorghum varieties?
• What is the potential yield per hectare of dual purpose sorghum?
• How and where to install a split plot trial?
• What are differences between dual purpose sorghum and other sorghum varieties?
• How to access bracharia seeds? What is the potential yield per hectare of bracharia?
• What is the importance of intercropping soya been and sorghum?

After discussions and lunch, visitors headed to the village of Sirakele to visit vegetable home gardens trials installed by the World Vegetable center to improve food security and allow landless women to grow vegetables and diversify food sources for their households.
After visiting the home gardens, the visitors participated to a demonstration of how to prepare nutritious food for children and pregnant women.
Using cereals and local ingredients, women of Sirakele; supported by the World Vegetable center technicians; demonstrated how to prepare nutritious food. The recipes of the meal was a mixture of sorghum, cowpea, groundnut and milk. Women participating to these nutrition activities acknowledged the importance of these training to improve households’ nutrition status by reducing malnutrition among children and pregnant woman using home grown crops and livestock by-products.
The field day was recorded by Radio Jamana Koutiala and Radio Yèrèdo M’Pessoba and broadcasted twice by these radios. Copies of these radio documents were provided to AMEDD.