IITA to tackle cassava weed challenge soonest says communication expert

Can you introduce yourself and give us insight into weed science project of IITA?

My name is Godwin Ansar, the communication and knowledge exchange expert with the cassava weeds management project. Cassava weeds management project is a five year project that is looking at solving the problem of weeds in cassava. As you know cassava is a major crop in Africa, and it is a source of livelihood to more than three million people in sub-Saharan Africa but unfortunately, cassava productivity in Africa is particularly being constraint by weeds, and while productivity of cassava in Asia is about 25-35 tons per hectare, in Africa we still have yield in farms as low as ten tons per hectare and one of the reason responsible for this challenge is weed, and if farmers fail to control the weeds in the first  eight weeks, he may end up not getting anything from the farm. We felt that we should develop solution that will address the issue of weeds in Africa. If you look at a crop like rice, we have specific herbicide that is always use to control weeds like in the case of rice production but there is none in cassava and that is why we are already working at having a solution with a herbicide to apply for the control of cassava weeds which is one aspect of the project. 

Another aspect of the project is how can we use best agronomy practices like space planting to actually control weeds as we are working at the possibility, and the third option is looking at possibility of integrating herbicide and agronomy planting density so that the cassava field can be weed free. The impact of weeds on cassava fields are huge as women contributes 90% of their time and labour in weeding to ensure weed free cassava farms  as they spent close to 500- 700 hours to actually ensuring free weed farms. Of course you know that using hoes and cutlass could have a lot of health impact on the back of these women as they always bend down to weed their farms. In view of all these, we are looking at being able to control weeds in order to save women from laborious exercise in the cassava field thereby making them to live healthier and happier. Also you will agree that our children were not spared in this exercise as they are always force to leave schools in order to take care of cassava fields. 

Again if we are able to control cassava weeds, children will have more time to spend in schools and the entire family will be healthier. This is just a brief about cassava weeds project. And we have three partners we are working with as regard the project; they are National Root crop Research Institute, Umudike, the University of Agriculture, Markurdi as partner and Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta. These are the three collaborating Institutions that we are working together with for the actualization of the project in the next five years. Our target is actually to see how we can improve the productivity of cassava on 125,000 households. These are the people we want to reach with the knowledge this project will generate.

How is the outcome going to be commercialized as getting to the end user who are farmers?

Currently, we are accessing all options, and the third and the fourth years of the project as we actually started the project this year January, and we are looking at it that most of the generated knowledge will be passed at the year 3-4 to farmers through extension agents who are part of the project component as we will be working closely with the ADPs. We believed the structure is on ground and all we need to do is to have a better collaboration and also see how we can activate the existing structures as we are not going to build anything new, but we will be working with farmers’ group at the local government levels. We intent to work with the Non Governmental Organization (NGOs) so that we can get to the real farmers at the grassroot. 

We are very specific at this year having an extension component and knowledge transfer component of the project. We are looking at how to identify the farms and also to mainstream gender because it is an important component of the project. One of our greatest successes will be how effectively it will be to bring in women because many projects have already integrated women. For cassava weed management we will bring in women as they contribute more than 70 % to rural Agriculture and getting them involved will ensure sustainability. 

The Institutions we are working with have excellent relationship with farmers in the agro ecological zones. So we believe we will be working with them and farmers. We want to capitalize on the media especially the television, radio, print media to see that some of the knowledge we have generated is passed unto farmers. Again in our plan, we are developing a matrix, and this matrix will tell us whether we are achieving our target or not. So we have all this. Also part of it is what we are doing with you as your paper is a specialized one in the agriculture sector, so that you can help us pass message across to farmers and other stakeholders.