Magome-Elim Lutheran Foundation-CVP Visit Report for Mar 18, 2011

2011 CVP
1st Visit, Year one
March, 18 2011


Village Magome
Pastor Samwel Kasuga
Companion Elim Lutheran Church Foundation
Attendees 17
Elevation 1807 M
Weather They normally get enough rain to raise their crops.
Reporters Nafeti, Gabriel, Roger and Rev. Lunodzo

Purpose of the visit
• Introducing the CV project to the congregation
• Taking the soil samples for soil analysis
• To deliver box file and a hand hoe
Topics
1. Introduction
Rev. Lunodzo Mang’ulisa delivered greeting from DIRA and introduces the Ag Institute staff and encouraged people to participate fully in the project. Roger gave the greetings from St. Paul Area Synod and Elim Lutheran Church Foundation and went through the practices we teach and recommend on our demonstration plots we have. We had representative from the pyrethrum company present and they explained the status of the pyrethrum company of Tanzania which is based in Mafinga- Iringa region. They also assured farmers of the stable market for their produce.

2. Handouts
The handouts were distributed to all then reviewed
• CVP Plot record of events
• DIRA – Institute of agriculture agreement
• Chronological Plot Management handout
• CVP Instruction – 1st Visit

3. Agricultural background of this area
The village has a population of 902 people and about 259 families. The grow
corn, beans, peas, Irish and sweet potatoes, bananas, fruits, tea and pyrethrum.
Farmers grow mostly local varieties of corn and few hybrid varieties and they grow
bean varieties which were introduced in the area a long time ago. They harvest an average of six bags of corn per acre and an average of three bags of beans per acre. We told them that using the practice we are going to teach and demonstrate to them we expect to harvest more than 20 bags of corn and ten bags of beans.











4. Soil sampling
After the meeting in the church we went outside and together with the members of congregations we took soil samples from 4 points around the church. Two types of samples were taken, from 6 inches depth and 12 inches depth. The samples will be taken to the laboratory for analysis

Comments/questions from audience
1. Soils are different from one part of the village to another, how can the soil samples taken are representative of the whole village?
We cannot take soil samples from every parts of the village; however we believe that the soil from one part of the village will not be very different from soils of another part of the same village.

2. They asked if we have plans do training regarding livestock.
At the moment we are training people to produce food crops, though we encourage people to keep livestock which will provide manure to fertilize their farm but we don’t provide training regarding livestock keeping.

3. Should they apply fertilizers during planting or do a 2nd fertilization?
We provide training and demonstration on fertilizer application at planting and when crops are ready for 2nd fertilizer application.

4. There are government demonstration plots but they are not visited regularly.
We think that the demonstration plot will be different because we are going to visit them regularly and discuss how to solve various problems which will arise.

Conclusions
We emphasized the importance of following instruction because the success of the program depends upon them following what we instructed.