McKnight funds research in agriculture, ecology
The McKnight Foundation of USA has provided about 600,000 US dollars for funding research projects under the Centre for Agriculture and Ecology in Tanzania in the regions of Morogoro, Singida and Mbeya which will be managed by the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA).
The project began to be implemented by SUA from 2019 for the first phase of three years until 2021 and will continue with the second phase starting this year (2022) until 2024.
The Researcher and Head of the Project at SUA, Prof Anthony Sengada said this here yesterday when opening a policy forum discussion on biological inputs, in an event that took place in Morogoro.
Prof Sengada said Ecological Agriculture focuses on environmental care, biodiversity in agriculture, soil health, humans and livestock.
“This is the second phase where the donors have provided a total of 600,000 US dollars for conducting research ecological agriculture which is healthy and environmental friendly” said Professor Sengada.
Prof Sengada said such amount will be dedicated to supporting farmers who are at the forefront of changing their traditional farming practices and making it ecological or biological farming in different ways.
“When challenges are raised, the researchers meet with farmers to discuss and develop solution based research activities to tackle those challenges and give a way forward to benefit farming activities” he said.
According to him, such funds will as well be channeled to research which is focused on agriculture as to relieve using a lot of chemicals, which are dangerous to soil fertility consumers’ health.
“We aim at conducting studies for pondering on ways of conducting agriculture that has less use of industrial fertilisers, and focusing on using of organic sourced pesticides,” said Professor Sengada.
The debate involved researchers from SUA University, Nelson Mandela University Institute, representatives of governmental and Non-Governmental Organisations, Farmers and Entrepreneurs who discussed the best way and Policies that will be related to Ecological Agriculture, agriculture that is sustainable and takes care of the Environment.
