Luanda - The implementation of four structuring projects to promote family farming, underway in Angola since 2020, is valued at 700 million dollars, an initiative financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Angolan government.
These are the MOSAP 3, SREP, SAMAP and Cabinda Value Chain projects, which have already made it possible to set up 8,000 Farmer Field Schools (FFS) for 53,000 families, impacting more than three million people in the country's 18 provinces, according to the director-general of the Agrarian Development Institute (IDA), Felismino da Costa.
Speaking to the press on the sidelines of the launch of the Farmer's Field School Manual, he stressed that these projects covered an average of 35,000 farming families, allowing production levels to rise from 300 to 1,000 tonnes per hectare.
He underlined that the main value of the Field School is the methods, techniques and scientific knowledge passed on to the families, based on the experiment in the actual field of local cultivation.
Costa said the Farmer Field Schools are revolutionizing the literacy system in the interior of the provinces, as they are encouraging more and more people to join the classes, with the aim of improving agricultural methods and techniques.
The coordinator of the Cabinda Value Chain project, José Fernandes, on his turn called for the decentralization of the Farmer's Field Schools, which are currently concentrated in the south of the country and need to go beyond the 13 provinces and extend to Angola's 18 provinces.
He said that in Cabinda, the ECA model and techniques are being introduced to livestock farming.
The coordinator of MOSAP 3, Francisco Gomes, pointed to the protection of the Khoisan peoples in Cuando Cubango province as the main challenge of implementing
These projects under the supervision of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry are managed by the IDA.OPF/QCB/DAN/AMP
