Crop and livestock health is crucial to agricultural productivity and farmer livelihoods.
However, in low income earning countries, including Uganda, small holder farmers are often left without sufficient support to deal with crop and animal problems.
Now, with the help of experts from Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI), farmers have demonstrated that through running plant clinics in farmer communities, there is potential for broadening plant clinics to better meet farmers needs through advice.
The team has developed integrated crop-livestock health advisory to help farmers in the country to address major health and production challenges affecting crops, livestock and food safety. This was revealed in a consultative review meeting organised by CABI for stakeholders involved in implementing this initiative.
The regional CABI director in Uganda, Dr Monica Kansiime, explained that the CABI-led project for joint plant and livestock clinics grew out of 18 years of plant clinic experience under the Global Plant Clinic and plantwise programmes.
Plant doctors noticed farmers constantly brought animal health queries to plant clinics because local rural extension services lacked integrated, multi-disciplinary support.
The Plantwise Model was established in 2005 through physical and mobile plant health clinics in Uganda and it expanded globally in 2011. The purpose was to diagnose crop pests and give science-based advice to farmers. Informal queries about livestock occurred early on in
Uganda, Bangladesh and Nicaragua because smallholder farmers manage both crops and animals side by side
A Plant Doctor Surveys conducted from 2016-2017 across multiple countries showed over 80 percent of plant doctors regularly received livestock questions because rural farmers had nowhere else to turn.
How scientists are doing it
Dickens Murungi, a senior agricultural inspector at MAAIF, explained that the background of agricultural productivity, animal and plant health are intrinsically linked to the health of humans, livestock and the environment in many different ways.
Livelihoods, food security and food safety rely on healthy plants and animals, which in turn need robust production systems. However, smallholder farmers often face challenges that impact production. This led to the Platform for Agricultural Risk Management to identify pests and diseases in crops and livestock among the most important constraints to agricultural productivity in several African countries, including Uganda.
Some of the causes include insufficient crop and livestock extension officers and veterinary officers, limited awareness and knowledge among farmers of crop and livestock health management, poor soil fertility and livestock nutrient management
What is this project doing?
The project’s overall goal is to contribute to improving the health and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in East Africa.
Experts have set up crop and livestock health advisory services that enable smallholder farmers to address major health and production problems affecting crops, livestock and food safety.
Mr Murungi explained that the project started initially as a pilot and had three main objectives: which include improving access to joint crop-livestock health advisory services for smallholder farmers, strengthening the crop-livestock service advisory system among plant and livestock outreach services and exploring the possibilities of expanding the model to farmers in Kenya from lessons learnt from the pilot in Uganda.
Key activities in Phase One included collecting farmer baseline information and practices on one health, establishing and operationalising 80 joint crop-livestock clinics and consultation sessions in four districts of Uganda, training crop and animal health officers and providing relevant information materials for farmers and veterinary staff on one health topics.
Other activities included assessing farmers’ demand for livestock advice at plant clinics in Kenya and sharing experiences from the Uganda pilot with relevant crop-livestock stakeholders in Kenya to pilot crop-livestock clinics and consultations in Kenya.