A report on farm and community practice carried out at Arua district farmers’ association from 28th March - 29th April 2022.

Abstract

ARUDIFA was formed by farmers in the year 1993. It is a member of Uganda National Farmers' Association (UNFA) now called Uganda National Farmers Federation (UNFFE) that initiated reformation in 1997. Registered on 27th April 1998 as a company limited by guarantee. ARUDIFA is a member of Arua District Non-Governmental Organization Network (ADINGON). ARUDIFA has a vision to empower farming society with improved food security, nutrition and increased household incomes in Arua district and a mission to promote increased production of value added marketable agro products. The objective of the outreach being to enable the students learn how the community operates on development issues pertaining agriculture, appreciate the importance of hands on experiences in agricultural production and adopt modern, scientific knowledge in agriculture. Various activities were conducted during the attachment such as Weekly review meetings, Village Savings and Loan association capacity building training, setting up demonstration nursery bed with the farmers for horticultural crops and training on better management practices, attending a one week refresher training on Climate smart agriculture and production and marketing plan, farmer group mobilization for seed distribution, setting up and planting in the farmer group prepared demonstration plot. I was able to gain hands on skills in setting up a demonstration plot of the standard sizing and can effectively set a mini irrigation plant that can be used for dry land farming due to practical application of classroom knowledge which gave me an overview of how the knowledge is translated to solve real life farmer's problems. It was concluded that the community attachment was successfully concluded and most of the baseline activities on the work plan developed were implemented and it was recommended to ARUDIFA that there is need to rotate students to the various sections and extension staff in the organization and to the University that the timing of industrial training should be rescheduled during the beginning of production seasons.