News
NARI in Porebada food, agriculture and environment team
7th April 2005
by Seniorl Anzu
The National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) is among key stakeholders working with villagers to identify potential village based resources and developments in the Porebada area of Central province.
This follows a Memorandum of Understanding between Porebada villagers and NARI’s Dry Lowlands research team at Laloki. The agreement was made recently after Ward Member, Cr. Arua Dairi and village elders approached NARI Laloki to secure technical assistance and advice on reviving food production in the area.
NARI Laloki team members have made several visits and introduced planting materials of African yam, fruit trees, gliricidia leguminous live staking tree, mucuna green manure covercrop and vetiver grass for multiplication.
Other stakeholders are also participating in the challenge. The Department of Agriculture and Livestock’s Land Use staff have done a field visit to assess the potential of land resources, the Department of Environment and Conservation is conducting a feasibility study on the conservation of mangroves along the village coastline and the National Forest Authority’s participation will deal with reforestation while similar inputs are anticipated from other stakeholders. The United Nations Development Programme has provided initial funding for the studies.
Porebada is a large Motuan coastal village with an estimated population of 6,000 inhabitants. With increasing population pressure on land, the fallow periods allowed for backyard gardens have decreased due to continuos cropping. If fortunate the fallow period has been two to three years at the most.
On the hillsides the resting periods for soil nutrient recharge are longer but observed crop health and nutrient deficiency symptoms suggest that today’s yields will be a far cry from the feast-bound harvests accomplished in the seventies and sixties.
Fish and other marine products continue to be an important part of the village food supply while the agricultural produce component has been on the decline over the last three to four decades.
The introduction of leguminous and cover crops and planting materials of food crops will form the basis of improving soil fertility through simple soil management practices and increase food production.