A farm and community attachment report carried out at Manafwa district Maefe sub-county.

Abstract

This report contains and describes the activities implemented, skills and qualifications gained, challenges faced during the industrial training, conclusion and recommendations derived from the challenges faced at maefe sub county manafwa district local government. The objective of this farm and community practice was to make students apply the knowledge got from the classroom into real practical field work, gained the skills and knowledge from the fields to build self confidence in the students and also to enable students learn from the field. During community practice I was attached at manafwa district local government maefe sub county. After orientation afterward I was first introduced to the different departments under production which include crop, fisheries, entomology and water for irrigation, later to the sub county where I was introduced to the sub county chief, all other stuffs and political leaders of the s/c for familiarization and later I implemented the activities such as; identification and registration of model farmers in all parishes of the sub county, attending council meetings, drafting activity work plan, carrying out trainings e.g. soil and water conservations measures like contour bunds, mulching, cover cropping, agroforestry, coffee management practices like pruning methods and control of pests and diseases. Farmer visits and on spot advisory services of specific farmers, monitoring and evaluation of government programs, carrying out demonstrations on the use of cypermethrine to control army worms and finally training farmers on banana BBW disease. These activities made me gain various skills like mobilization, trainings, handling of adults during trainings activity programing and also learning indigenous technical control of pests and diseases e.g. coffee stem borers, BBW in bananas and devastating African army worms, good communication skills and confidence in training farmers on both soil and crop management during practice period, I also faced some challenges like; difficulties in farmers mobilization, high expectations from farmers, limited transport means for field work and poor time management by the farmers to the training venue, In conclusion all the activities were conducted and farm and community attachment was carried out successfully. I gained a lot from the period of attachment since my field supervisors gave me an elaborate practical skills and knowledge in line with my career and relating with people in the field. Observations made while conducting community and farm outreach are Farmer/Beneficiaries High Expectations where driven more to monetary expectations, negative perceptions on government programs were fanners ignore important programs like owc inputs over poor yields and late delivery to beneficiaries. However, for some of the challenges mentioned above, I recommend that the communities should be sensitized o government programs and their relevance in alleviating poverty, proper mobilization of farmers to solve the problem of poor turn up of farmers and time management, government should increase the number of motorcycles to improve on transport easy movements of extension workers for better service delivery.