Farmer’s experimental field: soybean-faba bean intercropping

Small-scale farmers are poor. They lack access to substantial land, input and credit, which inhibits them from making investments and developing their farming systems. Using rhizobia inoculants with legume plants will support the use of organic fertilizer, which will potentially give higher yields while at the same time improving soil fertility. An Innovation Platform was set up in collaboration with local actors near Hawassa. The platform currently involves researchers from Hawassa University, local extension service actors and farmers in two villages. Farmers were introduced to legume inoculation and give seed and inoculant for faba bean and soybean. The rhizobium inoculants were produced by the Finnish company Elomestari Ltd, using selected, effective strains originating in Ethiopia and isolated in a previous project. Preliminary results indicate that farmers are very enthusiastic about the outcome in their fields. A few farmers also wanted to test the novel crop soybean.