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Here is our latest monthly theme pack of FRI resources, this month about farmer knowledge and innovation. The items in this pack demonstrate that farmers are not dependent on external experts, that they have a wealth of knowledge and, through experience and experimentation, are constantly innovating and refining agricultural practices.

The theme pack includes sixteen scripts from Resource Packs and eleven Farmer stories from Barza Wire.

Scripts

Restoring the past for a brighter future: Recovering and improving traditional seeds in Safo, Mali

Ethiopian farmers restore indigenous seed varieties

Bushbabies are meat, too: Farmers in Malawi use indigenous plants to manage pests and livestock diseases

Preserving wild food plants ensures a better future for all

Farmers triple sorghum yield thanks to mulch farming

Chicken hatchery: Innovative farmer invents large-capacity kerosene egg incubator

A Kenyan farmer uses water hyacinth to feed chickens

Sack farming: Unlimited vegetable harvest!

A farmer uses jatropha to protect his young oil palm seedlings from rodents

A farmer suffocates stem borers to death and saves his cocoa farm

Farmer uses red ants to protect fruit trees against pests

Innovative farmer uses pounded maize cobs to protect stored maize

Sawdust prolongs the storage life of potatoes

New Technique Reduces Work Needed to Thin Millet

Protecting Farmer Innovations and Traditional Knowledge

Sharing Farmer Innovations

Barza Wire stories

Mali: Farmers benefit from program to recover traditional seeds

Burkina Faso: Farmers sell, eat, and treat ailments with neglected plants

Tanzania: Villagers travel far to gather increasingly scarce wild vegetables

Ethiopia: Farmers multiply indigenous seeds to achieve food security

Malawi: Farmers use plant-based pesticides to control Fall armyworm and other pests

Burundi: Farmer finds new technique for preserving tomatoes

Congo: Milk from pumpkin seeds (Spore, Syfia, La Semaine Africaine)

South Africa: Traditional seeds help Sekhukhune District fight hunger

Uganda: Community group turns banana peels into inexpensive animal feed (Various Sources)

Burkina Faso: Innovation overcomes dry conditions (IRIN, IK Notes)

Uganda: Farmers find that human urine is an effective fertilizer (The Monitor)

The following resources are available in Swahili:

Maranda ya mbao yaongeza maisha ya ghala kwa viazi batata

Tanzania: Wanakijiji wakisafiri mbali maporini kutafuta mboga za asili zinazozidi kupotea kutokana na shughuliza kibinadamu

We hope that this kind of “one-stop shop” on selected topics is useful, and that you can use the resources in this month’s theme pack to make effective programming on farmer knowledge and innovation.

Please note that three of the older scripts were written when FRI was known as DCFRN, or the Developing Countries Farm Radio Network.

This theme pack was prepared with the support of The McLean Foundation.