Stories from the Field - Mzee Sumasuma's Efforts to Adopt New Technologies Pays Off

Mzee Sumasuma's Efforts to Adopt New Technologies Pays Off

This posting was originally posted on Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa Website

Songea district, Tanzania

Mzee Sumasuma is a fifty one year old man, with two wives and fifteen children. Like most Tanzanian’s rural dwellers his livelihood has always been based on the agricultural sector, but unfortunately in the past his farm-yields were very low. A chance event two years ago, changed his life and that of his children for good. Mzee Sumasuma was invited to attend a training demonstration session organised by Agricultural Research Institute, Uyole (ARI – Uyole) and supported by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. The training exposed him to a new way of doing agriculture and in his own words has changed his life dramatically.

“I was introduced to the idea of improved seeds and effective fertiliser use during the demonstration and when I tried out what I learnt, my yield improved considerably, enabling me to get a surplus from 500 kg of maize and 60 kg of soybean,” he says.

Mzee Sumasuma further says that the increase in yield has resulted in a huge increase in his income and positively impacted on the quality of life for his family over the past two years. Today, Mzee Sumasuma is a lead farmer and an agricultural champion in Tanga Village where he regularly shares his success story while urging other farmers to emulate his example by adapting new technologies.

In addition to the use of new technologies, Mzee Sumasuma also attributes his success to the presence of an Agro dealer within the village. He says that the presence of an agro dealer in his village has greatly reduced the costs and distance for farmers he acts as a one-stop-shop.

“The Agro dealer in our village provides invaluable support for local farmers because the shop provides us with the needed inputs while at the same time providing extension services, thereby helping us to improve our yields,” he said.

He adds: “The existence of various discussion platforms through which to share experiences in farming is critical as it acts as an information dissemination point for other farmers to learn from each other and get advise on how to address various challenges that they may be facing in their farms,” he adds.

Through these platforms farmers get information on location of the nearest agro-dealer, prices of inputs and potential markets for their yields among others.

This year, Mzee Sumasuma, has cultivated maize on a 0.7 ha piece of land and soybean on 0.5 ha. He has used improved soybean (Soy 1 and Bossier varieties) and maize (Uyole 615) from the ARI-Uyole project. He expects to harvest 15 bags (1350 kg) of maize and 10 bags (900 kg) of soybean.

From his expected income Mzee Sumasuma, plans to increase his SACCO savings from the current Tsh. 15,000 (US$ 10) to Tsh. 200,000 (US$ 140), pay his children school fees, build a new iron-roof house and purchase a bicycle to use to transport his farm inputs from the agro-input shop and his farm.