Blogs

PlantVillage has kicked off with digging soil bunds to regenerate waste land into agricultural use as part of a package of projects meant for communities living in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) region in Kenya.

The digging of soil bunds is one of a number of recently launched projects in the northern region of the country, with Isiolo, Marsabit, and Samburu acting as pilot counties.

Soil bunds are holes dug in sloppy lands to slow down rain runoff and give the soil the ability and time to absorb that water, thereby reducing soil degradation.

PlantVillage has partnered with the Malawi Plant Health Digital Service (MaDiPHS) to establish a digital plant health system aimed at predicting, identifying, monitoring, and managing pests and diseases.

The PlantVillage Nuru application has been selected as one of the monitoring tools used in the digital plant health system project, which will run for five years before it’s handed over to the Malawian government.

As a means of scaling up the cassava project and ensuring an adequate supply of clean cassava planting materials and rapid multiplication of the seed, PlantVillage Dream Team members in Kilifi County, Kenya, received a training on the Minisett technology at Kizingitini in Kilifi South sub-county in an exercise led by Ms. Gladys Mrira of ASDSP.

The PlantVillage team in Kenya, has constructed the first-ever underground capillary wick irrigation system at the Ririma borehole in Marsabit County (Northern Kenya) for growing vegetables: cabbages, kale, curly kale, Swiss chard, capsicum, beetroot, and sweet potato vines.

The project comes as the drought situation in Kenya escalates, with communities in the Arid and Semi Arid Lands (ASAL regions) experiencing the worst effects in years. We are now entering the 6th successive below normal rain season which has led to widescale stress in the community.

The vegetable project is a resilience revolution and a bold step towards regreening Marsabit and, in the process, combating drought and famine, contributing to the national goal of food security for its people, and empowering vulnerable families through income generation.

Seven young female scientists at the PlantVillage Parasitoids Rearing Lab at Alupe in Busia
County, Kenya, are notable for their remarkable work that is changing the game for farmers in
10 counties in Kenya in combating the problem of fall armyworms.

As the world marks International Women’s Day under the theme "Innovation and Technology for
Gender Equality," the lab at Alupe, supported by USAID, stands out as a good case study of a
modern biological crop pest control technology that has provided equal opportunities to 11
young scientists to explore their potential.

The lab, whose idea is modeled after PlantVillage’s advocacy for youth empowerment,
integrates into the whole idea of championing the cause of eradicating global hunger through
technology.

PlantVillage has partnered with the Ustadi Foundation in the Jobs Open for the Youth (JOY) project to create employment opportunities on a wage or through self-employment for rural youth in Kilifi County.

For Christiana Mokube, joining PlantVillage to work for the African community to find solutions to food insecurity is the best experience she’s ever had, and one of the things she’s marking as this Black History Month edition comes to an end.

At least 1,000 families living in Samburu, a county lying in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) region of northeastern Kenya, will benefit from a large-scale agroforestry project initiated by PlantVillage’s Dream Agro Consultancy Limited in partnership with the County Government of Samburu.

The tree nursery project follows up on numerous mechanisms laid down by PlantVillage’s Dream Team officers working to uplift families in the drought-stricken region.

In the era of climate change, relying on rain-fed agriculture has become unsustainable. Particularly in Kenya, rainy seasons which typically start from march through May and October through December, after which the weather becomes too dry to support growing crops, have become uncertain. When rains are scarce, farmers risk losing entire crops to drought.

A lagarta do funil do milho foi detectada em 2017, nas províncias de Tete (distrito de Changara e cidade de Tete), Manica (distritos de Chimoio, Vanduzi, Catandica e Manica) e Gaza (distritos de Bilene, Chicualacuala e Xai-Xai) em Moçambique. A Lagarta do funil de milho, Spodoptera frugiperda, é uma praga migratória e polífaga que ataca mais de 80 diferentes tipos de culturas, incluíndo o arroz, mapira, trigo e cana-sacarina, sendo o milho seu principal hospedeiro. E nos últimos anos tem assolado outras províncias do país.

PlantVillage, through the Dream Team Agro Consultancy Limited, is partnering with the County Government of Samburu under the Department of Livestock, Veterinary, and Fisheries to recruit 60 Community Disease Reporters (CDRs) to back up the organization’s efforts towards empowering pastoralist communities.

The CDRs will join the PlantVillage Scouts unit, which is tasked with reporting cases of animal disease outbreaks in rural areas to relevant officials from the Department of Livestock, Veterinary, and Fisheries, allowing for long-term efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.

PlantVillage has been recognized as a top finalist in the recent Africa-Korea Agtech Innovation Challenge and Summit held in Nairobi, Kenya, on February 8^th  and 9^th  2023.

PlantVillage was among the 21 finalists who impressed with their disruptive technologies assisting farmers across the globe.Under the theme of improving agricultural productivity and efficiency, of note was our AI that farmers use to identify disease symptoms and pest damage on crops.

In early 2021, PlantVillage embarked on the cassava project in Kilifi County with the aim of scaling up production of the crop that has now been largely adopted in Bungoma and Busia counties.

The organization, through the Dream Team Agro Consultancy Limited, set up demo-plots, trained farmers, and distributed clean cuttings.

Farmers are now able to obtain clean cuttings from their own crops and ensure the continuity of the project, proving it more viable than before, when they used to make losses after planting using infected cuttings.

PlantVillage has partnered with Agricycle, a US-based organization, to get better prices for cassava farmers.

PlantVillage will now link small-scale cassava farmers in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania to an international market provided by Agricycle, which offers to buy the produce at Ksh65 per kilo, a 50 percent increase from the Ksh32 to Ksh38 offered by brokers.

A la demande de la coopérative Gouantina en début de campagne, la DreamTeam Douna piloté par Albert COMPAORE met en place un champ école de riziculture intensive dans l'optique de mieux enseigner les bonnes pratiques culturales de production de riz.

La coopérative Gouantina est une coopérative composée de 65 femmes productrice de riz, elle a pour...Read more

For most people living in arid and semi-arid regions, cassava is a staple because it is drought-tolerant and also grows in a wide variety of soils without fertilizer, even poor soils, unlike crops such as maize. It is for this reason that PlantVillage is seeking funding to scale up its thriving cassava project meant for farmers in Kenya as a climate change mitigation strategy for building...Read more

PlantVillage, as part of its efforts to assist communities in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs), has signed a tripartite agreement to set up an irrigation project to help farmers in 30 households in Kilifi County, Kenya, combat drought.

Beneficiaries in the 30-household project are members of the Nuru Community Irrigation Group Community Based Organization (CBO) and landowners in Garishi,...Read more