More than 40 people were shown how to start home gardens in a training organized by the Latter Day Saint Church and Vanuatu Department of Agriculture this week..
The participants included people with special needs and non-church members.
The training is provided under church’s Stake Self Reliance Backyard Garden (SSRBG) project.
“The purpose of requesting such training is because most of the church members are not self- reliant so I believe such training will motivate them to engage in home gardening and also to improve their skills through the information obtained from this training, said Stake Specialist for SSRBG, Daniel Ringiau.”
“Most of them consume mainly imported food.
“Over the past three years, the church has been organising trainings on self- reliance especially income generating activities such as operating small scale businesses, sale of local produce at the road side markets and sale of cooked food,” stated.
The training targeted topics on backyard gardening, nursery establishment, soil improvement techniques, pests and diseases, agribusiness- simple gross margin calculation including a practical session on backyard garden.
This is a first backyard garden training that was requested by the church.
Mr Ringiau said “The Covid- 19 situation has paved a way forward for people to go back to agriculture to ensure food security and to sustain their livelihood.
“Our aim is to ensure the participants will implement what they have learned from this training.
“A monitoring system is already in place to ensure each group with established committees will provide feedback on backyard garden activities in their areas after the training.
DARD provided vegetable seed packets, seed trays with seed raising mix and information materials to the participants.
Photo supplied Caption: DARD officers and participants