Educational support for farmers in grassland management

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(Edited)
Dear readers, in the previous article we talked about the importance of agricultural extension to educate farmers about some of the alternatives that can help you solve the problems that arise in your production unit and of course provide them with assistance and technical support so that they develop skills in the use of the tools that are supplied. In this sense, in order for the main needs to be truly met, institutions for agricultural research must carry out a thorough diagnosis in rural sectors to identify the weaknesses that do not allow them to maintain adequate levels of production.

In that sense, years ago, some specialists in the forage area decided to carry out a diagnosis in some rural sectors of the Colón municipality of the state of Zulia, to determine what are the causes that do not allow farmers to improve the yield of pastures within their production systems, among the strategies or methodology used to gather information of interest was the participatory diagnosis through talks, surveys and visit of production units to observe the conditions of the pastures and the management implemented.

With the participation of the farmers, it was evident that the problem they had in their livestock systems was the low coverage of the ducks in the areas destined for the feeding of ruminants due to poor agronomic and zootechnical management, coupled with an inadequate distribution of the area (division of paddocks) and the scarce use of food alternatives such as forage conservation (silage), which translated into a low milk production. To reach this conclusion of elaborated a problem tree in conjunction with farmers that will be shared with you below.

After identifying the problem, we looked for alternatives to solve it with a positive vision and could achieve an improvement in the coverage of the pasture, for this, we began to train and provide technical support to small livestock producers in terms of agronomic management, distribution in size of paddocks, number of paddocks and food alternatives in critical times. The objective was for at least 50% of the 40 agricultural producers attended to efficiently carry out the agronomic and zootechnical management of pasture cultivation, in addition to learning to make silage.

For 8 months, a thorough planning was carried out where theoretical-practical workshops were executed for the training of producers in their own livestock production units, also the local resources that could be used for supplementation in critical times were diagnosed together with the farmers, technical support regarding the grazing cycle according to the yield of their pastures and distribution of the forage surface. Field days were also held to explain the application of the necessary agronomic tasks such as fertilization in pasture cultivation and to culminate assemblies and tours were planned for each of the benefited production units to observe the results obtained.

The results obtained, although they were not as expected, were satisfactory because 30% of the 40 producers attended managed to acquire the appropriate knowledge to manage their pastures, they began to implement the fertilization of pastures and manage the animals efficiently always respecting the days of rest and grazing as well as the efficient distribution of the number of paddocks according to their real animal load, they also learned to develop feeding alternatives to solve the low coverage present in critical times, among these alternatives is silage.

Dear readers, without a doubt, agricultural extension strengthens the education and development of rural sectors and generates great satisfaction in the farmer and technical staff because an effective teaching-learning process is established because you learn by doing.

Thank you for reading our article, until a next installment.

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From agrotecnia we reiterate our gratitude to our followers and all the communities that value our agricultural content.



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4 comments
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That is a great success. That is basically one person out of three that changed their way for handling their pastures. Congrats!

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Greetings dear friend @lemouth, it is very satisfying to work with agricultural producers since, they have a lot of experience that they have acquired in their agricultural ecosystems for years, we just have to share new technologies to achieve sustainable production.

So long, have a great week.

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I am sure you are also proud on your side to see them progressing!

Cheers!

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