Empowering smallholder farmers in Tanzania through Training and Capacity building.

In de week, from August 27th to 29th 2024, trainer Alma Ruting travelled to Iringa, Tanzania to provide training in the Nuffic OKP TMT+ project: “Sustainable horticultural production in Tanzania (Mtumbwi)”.
Hosted by Green Valley Agro (GVA), we welcomed a diverse group of participants which included farmers, teachers, and extension workers. Together we focused on the role of Quality Control and post-harvest management in the value chain. All to contribute to generate a better income for the farmers and to reduce food losses.

Quality control plays an import role in all the different parts of fruit and vegetable chain. We focused on internal and external quality aspects of fruits & vegetables and all the issues which play an important role in quality. Farmers play an important role and have to make the right decisions: which variety, which growing system, the use of harvesting equipment, harvesting time, etc. Sorting and grading as early as possible in the chain can prevent food losses. Besides this, the training covered the topics: minimum quality requirements, UNECE and OECD standards.
The participants practised with practical exercises; product classification was practised with wooden beads on which defects were marked. We practised with tools like colour charts and brix meter.

During the training we linked to the previous training of Mark Bos about record keeping, data collection and analysis and we linked also to a previous training about GLOBALg.a.p.
Interesting discussions arose during the training sessions, leading the participants to share their knowledge and expertise from the field and helping each other to improve. On the last day we were discussing about what we have learned and what we take back to our own organisations. With many thanks to Green Valley Agro for hosting us and for all the participants being eager to learn and sharing experiences amongst the group.