Proposed by POSTDATA ERC Project
Action for Sustainable Improvement & Management Organization (ASIMO) is a registered non-profit making, non-political, non-racial and non-religious national non-governmental organization with the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC), National Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Development Juba. Core programmes/services of the organization: ASIMO mainly focus on the following programme thematic areas categorized into five broad pillars: a. Food Security and livelihoods b. Health/WASH c. Peace building. d. Education; and e. Protection/Gender-Based Violence
Description
The project seeks to enhance innovative and inclusive business solutions that promote sustainable production, post-harvest handling, marketing and distribution of onions, passion fruit, pineapples, and carrots value-chains for economic resilience among 20,000 farmers in Jonglei State, South Sudan. Through this project, ASIMO will identify, profile and train 20,000 farmers on modern agronomic practices, and support the establishment of 24 demonstration sites as learning centers, establish for onions, passion fruit, pineapples, and carrots gardens. Additionally, farmers will be supported with drought-resistant and disease-tolerant planting inputs for selected farmer groups to boost production and self-reliance and will be encouraged to use organic fertilizers such as composted manure for increased yields and organic pesticides in controlling pests and diseases to ensure high-quality production, health purposes and the ability to meet international market quality control demands. Project participants will be trained on climate-smart agricultural practices for increased adoption of best practices that aid increased productivity. ASIMO will organize 20,000 farmers into groups and integrate them into farmer associations, build their capacity to produce, negotiate for better prices, value addition and link them to fresh fruits and vegetables market. ASIMO will team up with a technology partner called M-Omulimisa using digital information platforms (mobile-based platform) to send out key weather, agriculture (crop pests and diseases, agro-inputs), market and early warning messages across mobile phones which will promote and enforce behaviour change among farmers and provide various market prices for onions, passion fruit, pineapples and carrots farmers. These platforms will be leveraged by the existing extension network with the region to enhance the spread of the information. All key messages will be shared in native languages which are mostly understood by the communities in eastern Uganda for increased information uptake. The project will train farmer groups on post-harvest technologies of onions, passion fruit, pineapples, and carrots. The field-based training will improve the quality and add value (increased revenue) to the harvested products. All technologies will have a positive effect on labour savings, as well as the year-round availability of fruits and vegetable products. The groups will be trained on post-harvest technologies (cleaning, drying, processing, quality assurance and branding of produce) using recommended practices. In total, 5,000 famer households will be targeted from Bomas in South Sudan