Conservation Agriculture - Serving People & the Environment

ICENECDEV is taking a comprehensive approach to strengthening agricultural system, fighting hunger and strengthening food security at scale. ICENECDEV does this by investing in cutting-edge research to develop stronger seed and greener fertilizers; helping farmer's access capital;; and accelerating access to mobile technology and content that learn and access to real-time market information.

Agroforestry and Integrated Pest Management(IPM) are important conservation practices.IPM is the science of combining different options and practices to achieve long lasting control of pest.The approach frequently blends technologies from research with traditional farming practices, to reduce crop losses in a sustainable manner. The success of IPM depends largely on farmers’ knowledge and understanding of biological and ecological processes that affect pest status.

Implementing IPM causes minimum damage to humans and the environment and helps to increase the food and income value at harvest. Participatory research and learning approaches ,facilitated by extension workers, help to increase farm-level literacy in IPM and promote utilization of IPM to solve pest problems.

Among some of the problems that affect vegetable farmers/farmers in general in Cameroon is pest and diseases. This have forced the local farmers to use of insecticides and pesticides, The farmers have low level of education ( more than 67% of the farmers are illiterates).The use of the pesticide and insectides has gone along way to affect the yields(crop damage and poison), environment( destruction of soil organism/microbes) and the health of the farmers. The farmers have little or no knowledge on the applications of the pesticides to regulate pests.

ICENECDEV is advocating for the use of Integrated Pest Management(IPM) to control pest.This approach will blend technologies from research with traditional farming practices, to reduce crop losses,protect the environment and the health of the farmers.

ICENECDEV is training farmers, community leaders and extension workers of the ministry of agriculture and rural development, group leaders of farmer associations, common initiative group and cooperatives in Cameroon on the implementation of IPM to reduce crop damage, using practical demonstration on farmland in the community(farmer field school)

ICENECDEV train farmers on the following conservation agriculture activities:

• Field diagnosis to detect and monitor pests and natural enemies, assess crops damage severity and develop vegetable pest lists
• Land preparation for vegetable framing as Farmer field school for the community
• Guideline for appropriate use and handling of pesticides
• Field techniques to collect, preserve and send pest and natural enemy specimens to expert for identification