View Document: 240812 Dove Training 3 August 2023 Revised Samogoni Ecological Agriculture

CDWAI Team Members David and Anna Kulimbao facilitated this 2 day Workshop with members of the Samogoni Farmers Group of Samagoni Village in August 2023. The area was already experiencing an unusually long dry season which had started with poor rainfall in the last 3 months of the normal rains. The participants related their experiences of watching their gardens wilt, with the loss of expected yields and how they had tried to maintain family food security and cash crop production.

THere was long discussion of over the last 70 years how population has increased and how gardening practices have changed while, at the same time there is less forest available to make new gardens.

A basic explanation of how climate change disrupts the expected seasonal weather and causes the extreme weather events of climate forcing was offered and discussed. The core strategies of adapting to climate change were offered as:

Protecting and preserving their garden land, especially topsoil

Restoring and building soil fertility through agroforestry, mulching and manuring and 

Always planting the preferred and proven drought resistant food crops for their area. 

Several new crops were demonstrated, the value of legumes for adding nitrogen to the soil and how root nodules are important for this was also presented, including helping the group members recognize and identify local native and introduced legumes.