This project will engage beneficiaries through sustainable farming practices and trainings. It will also provide support to the small scale farmers living in rural communities in order to enhance food security at household level. The project is intended for vulnerable but viable households that have suffered chronic food insecurity due to lack of fundamental resources. Moreover, these trainings seek to address and provide alternatives to environmentally detrimental farming practices.
Despite the importance of agriculture as a means of improving the livelihoods of rural populations, its contribution towards poverty reduction has remained low. Small-scale farmer households continue recording low yields due to bad weather, late access to inputs, poor farming methods, low quality inputs, poor time management, low access to agricultural information, and technology and field management practices. As a result, food insecurity is one of rural Zambia's major developmental challenges.
YEDI will use a sustainable farming method that draws on many of the basic ideas and concepts behind Climate-smart Conservation Agriculture, an approach that is rapidly growing in popularity across sub-Saharan Africa in recent years. The programme shall provide skills that promote conservation tillage, soil fertility improvement, and erosion control. Moreover, it will allow vulnerable households to receive farming inputs and trainings that will meet their socio-economic and environmental needs.
YEDI expects farmers' income to increase significantly once they sell their produce. We also expect malnutrition rates to decrease due to improved family farms with nutritious food and the extra income. There will be reduced vulnerability among the beneficiaries as they will engage in other income generating ventures. Food security will improve at the community level which will eventually lead to an increase in community-wide nutrition and wellbeing.
This project has provided additional documentation in a DOCX file (projdoc.docx).
