By Gloria Siwisha
The Eastern Province Jurisdictional Sustainable Landscape Programme (EPJ-SLP), a follow-up initiative to the recently concluded ZIFLP, has commenced the process of establishing an additional 200 Farmer Field Schools (FFS), in Eastern Province.
This action would subsequently increase the number of FFSs in the region to 678, from the current 478, set up by the Zambia Integrated Forest Landscape Project (ZIFLP).
The farmer field schools would act as learning hubs where lead farmers would develop skills, share knowledge, and adopt innovative techniques to improve productivity and resilience, under the guidance of extension officers drawn from the Ministry of Agriculture.
Additionally, over 5,000 lead farmers are expected to be recruited, who would in turn be servicing 10 follower farmers each.
The goal of the project, is to increase the number of lead farmers from the current 10,755 to 16,960, while that of follower farmers would be increased from 107,550 to 169,500.
EPJSLP’s Environmental and Social Inclusion officer Godfrey Phiri said establishment of farmer field schools and recruitment of more farmers, was aimed at enhancing the adoption and development of climate smart agriculture (CSA), so as to strengthen the resilience of communities to climate change and ultimately contribute to the reduction of emissions in the region.
He said the initial ZIFLP, which took off in 2017 and closed-out in February 2024, was a precursor to an emissions reduction programme and that following its successful implementation, the country had now fully transitioned into reducing emissions in Eastern Province, resulting from unsustainable land management practices.
“We are scaling up farmer field schools. In the initial phase we started out with 478 and then we have additional 200 farmer field schools that we are going to do under the EPJSLP. The idea is to make these communities resilient and one of the key factors under this component is adoption of climate smart agriculture initiatives,” he said.
He said farmers needed to fully adopt climate smart agriculture technologies if their production and productivity was to improve.
“Climate smart agriculture needs to be adopted. Under the ZIFLP, we knew that we focused so much on demonstration plots but now, we want adoption of these climate smart agricultural initiatives on-farm, so that we begin to impact on productivity. When we impact on productivity, I think that is the lasting impact that an emissions reduction programme like EPJSLP is looking at. We are only going to build resilience in these communities if they transfer that knowledge from the farmer field school onto their fields, onto their gardens,” Mr Phiri said.
Some of the CSA technologies that would be validated at farmer field schools would include agroforestry; ripping, pot-holing, and crop residue retention.
“As a project we are looking at agriculture as one of the key components that we need to focus on as you know, the impact of climate change has been so much on agriculture. We know that in times of less rain, agriculture is affected and when agriculture is affected, livelihoods are affected and that impacts on the Gross Domestic Product of the country,” he said.
The EPJSLP is a 2024 to 2030 results-based Government initiative, developed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions coming from unsustainable land management practices, while simultaneously improving rural livelihoods including forest and wildlife conservation and management.
The programme is supported by the World Bank at a total cost of US$63.9 million dollars, out of which US$ 50 million dollars is meant for purchasing verified emissions reductions, while US$ 13.9 million dollars is for supporting and aligning investments under sustainable forest management; climate smart agriculture, and wildlife management in Eastern Province.
The generated and verified emissions reductions, would be traded as certified carbon credits to the BioCarbon Fund initiative for sustainable forest landscapes and other international carbon buyers to generate monetary benefits that would be transparently distributed to the local communities to motivate them to better manage their natural resources at a jurisdictional level.-NAIS