Championing radio…
29 September – Karen Hampson reports: Today I got an email from David Mowbray, a Farm Radio Associate, who had been attending the 50th Anniversary Conference for CIMMYT, in Mexico. In a conference session yesterday afternoon, Ken Giller delivered a key note speech entitled Systems agronomy: From fields to farms and farming systems. Ken is a professor at Wageningen University, leader of the N2Africa project and project champion for the Legume Alliance in Tanzania.
David heard Ken say: “We have to look beyond traditional methods for reaching farmers. We have to work with organisations like Farm Radio who have a great combination of radio and ICTs to reach large numbers of of small scale farmers.” David told me he was so taken aback that he jumped out of his seat, put his arms up in victory and whispered “That’s us”…
We are very fortunate to have Ken Giller acting as technical advisor and advocating for the Legume Alliance. Current work of the Legume Alliance includes the SILT project, the GALA project and the common bean work within the UPTAKE project. This shows the true value of partnership working
These projects are exploring different aspects of the how multi-partner collaborations can support multiple-media adoption of improved legume technologies. In addition these projects are addressing policy issues and problems of failures in the supply chain for legume inputs.
Karen Hampson is regional manager for East and Southern Africa at Farm Radio International – she is based in Arusha, Tanzania.