Showing posts with label Creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Creativity. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Proper post harvest management for food security and better livelihoods

Effective post-harvest handling is paramount for maintaining the quality and freshness of fruits from when they are harvested to when they reach the consumer.

Improving efficiency and productivity of post harvest food handling and processing in the community goes along way in helping the people.

Milk processing
Processing provides for security of food supply, enhance the keeping quality of the original materials and, generally provide the basis for making a reasonable living.

This will ensure access to a more secure supply of foods and raw materials for manufacturing and provide for more employment opportunities while enhancing incomes and bringing greater prosperity to people.

Food industries are an excellent form of income for the entrepreneur and markets can be better exploited, with crops stored pending price rises and selling when the time is right.
Drying of maize to prolong the storage period

Whether handling, storing and/or processing, access to improved technologies, to materials and information is paramount. As youth we therefore need to embrace the use of technologies and use them correctly as we venture into farming, this will also help in boosting the intellectual wealth of the communities in this regard.


Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Science for pest management


Push-pull plot during 2nd season, maize and desmodium with Striga border crop. The plot is bordered with Napier grass. © icipe
Push–pull is a technology that uses intercropping to repel insect pests from crops. The push-pull strategy intercrops cereals with a repellant plant bordered by an attractive trap plant.
This technology is now being adopted and disseminated far and wide and since its development in 1997 an approximately 100,000 farmers have benefited from it. Young scientists should therefore strive to give agriculture a new lease by investing in such problem solving researches.  

Friday, December 9, 2011

Creativity at its best; tackling the burden of water scarcity

Show me one single sector which doesn't depend on water and I'll show you a liar. Every sector is in one way or another depending on water for its operations and agriculture is not exempted. This video is therefore very useful as it shows how people are tackling the burden of ferrying water - just the kind of creativity we require in agriculturefor the smallholder farmers.