Participants share their lessons from the farm clinic
Gladys Apio, student
“I learnt about banana diseases and pests such as banana weevils. The expert talked about how these weevils affect stems and suckers. Also, I learnt about banana plantation management and mulching. In the near future, when I start my own plantation, I will incorporate the knowledge I have learnt from this Farm Clinic.”
Tabi Nambula, tailor
“I specifically attended the clinic to acquire more knowledge on banana growing. For example, I learnt the dangers a pest such as banana weevil can cause to a plant including stunted growth or worse, death of the crop. In order to curb some of these pests, we were advised on a number of practices such as weeding and use of clean planting material.”
Hellen Kusasira, farmer
“There were a number of important things I learnt from the farm clinic. It was interesting to discover that yellow corns have high nutritional content, especially carbohydrates and when these are fed to a cow, they have the capability of producing high levels of milk.”
Florence Babirye
“I got important information on goat keeping such as, how to feed them, health practices like deworming them and their nutritional value, among other things. It was a great learning and I am happy I attended the clinic.”
Daniel Kabunga, businessman and farmer
“Currently, I am doing dairy farming at home, and, on my previous occasions, I always had the tendency of calling up veterinary doctors to treat my cows even for something as small as deworming. I was, however, happy to learn from the Farm Clinic that farmers do not always need to call up veterinary doctors to treat their animals.”
Gerald Ssekabira, graduate
“I learnt many lessons from the Farm Clinic. One of them included why it is important for youth to get into farming. The youth were urged to join the sector because of their high energy levels, but also, there are a number of opportunities they can get in agriculture.”
Kenneth Mujinya, farmer
“One of the key things I learnt from the Farm Clinic is the importance of record keeping in farming. It is a way of knowing whether farming is either making profits or losses. But also, I learnt that it is important to be patient as a farmer because bearing fruits (harvests) takes time.”
Alliyah Nakato, clinical officer
“There was a lot of new information I learnt about banana growing. For example, the importance of mulching and spacing them during the planting season. The other things I learnt about include the tissue culture, an artificial way of growing bananas as well as other fundamental factors for banana growing including soils and pest control methods.”
Peter Michael Opio, pharmacist
“I learnt something new on backyard farming, that one can actually incorporate this farming within their home compound. Some of the crops that can be grown in a backyard farm include high value crops such as eggplants and tomatoes. Then, if one wants to control the growing conditions for plants, they can consider greenhouse farming.”
Betty Nabakooza, farm manager
“I attended the dairy and goat session at the Farm Clinic. From the dairy session, I learnt how to make silage, an animal feed. In order to make it, we were taught how to select nutritious pastures from the field and also how to make pits for placing the pastures (grass).”
Abdul Nasser, field officer
“My interest in attending the Farm Clinic was to purposely widen my knowledge on goat rearing. One of the things I learnt is that there is a hormone that can be injected to a doe (female) goat in order to make it come on heat. Once it comes on heat, it will attract a buck (male goat), hence, mating. We were told this hormone is a great technique for reproduction among goats.
