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Caritas South Sudan Empowers Over 2,000 Farmers with Modern Farming Techniques

Caritas South Sudan upgrades knowledge of farmers in South Sudan with modern farming techniques.

The leadership of Caritas South Sudan, the development and humanitarian arm of the Catholic Bishops in the East-Central African country, has embarked on an initiative that will see thousands of farmers in the country’s capital Juba equipped with techniques and tools for urban farming.

In an interview with ACI Africa, Joseph Pasquale, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Caritas South Sudan said that so far, some 2,243 urban dwellers had been identified for the distribution process.

“The households have received vegetable kits of seeds that include tomato seeds, cabbage seeds, watermelon seeds, kale seeds and okra seeds among others,” Pasquale told ACI Africa Saturday, October 10.

He added, “The tools the beneficiaries have received include a double-edged hoe that they will be using in this intervention to deal with food security.”

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Speaking on the sidelines of the event in the Gudele Residential area of Juba city, Pasquale said, “Our today’s target is 671 households but we expect to have a two-day distribution.”

Additionally, plans are underway to set up demonstration farms in the country’s capital that would be used to equip the farmers with efficient farming techniques, Mr. Pasquale further said, adding that extension farmers would be trained to offer services to individual farmers in their small gardens.

“The training is set up for hopefully next week; we will train 15 to 20 beneficiaries to manage the respective demonstration work in the five different residential areas in Juba,” the Caritas official said, and added in reference to the training facilitators, “They will play a role of enlightening the beneficiaries who have received the seeds to go ahead and plant the seeds in their areas.”

According to the South Sudan Caritas Coordinator, the new urban gardens were expected to come in handy in providing food, especially nutritious vegetables, in and out of season.

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He said, “The issue of seasonality will not affect the farmers because the original plan is to use the seeds out of the seasons and to cultivate even in the absence of rains using simple irrigation methods.”

Richard Parouk Lomodo, a community elder who also received the seeds and farming tools expressed his appreciation saying that the donation was a timely intervention in South Sudan when many people had already lost their means of livelihood during the COVID-19 lockdown.

“Many of us lost jobs this year due to the pandemic and we don’t have enough money to buy everything from the market. Besides, with these tools and seeds, we will train our families to work within the compound to produce food in a small garden,” said Lomodo.

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He added, “We have been taught not to depend on the rains and we will instead be watering our gardens now that the rains are about to stop.”

Caritas South Sudan is overseeing the implementation of the project that was funded by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Program (WFP).