Euphrasia Mwape is a 68-year-old farmer from Kayuni village in Chirundu district who has been involved in CTDT projects since 2018, she recounts on how farming practices have changed in her community due to the effects of climate change.
“Farming practices of nowadays and that of the past years is different, in the past our forefathers used to practice their agriculture easily because of the good rains. Since the recent past, the rains are scarce because of the impact climate change has brought upon us.
The change in climate has changed a lot of things for us, what we are supposed to do with the change in climate is to adopt a diversity of crops. Different crops will ensure our food security as we do not completely loose out on everything. With this climate we should not only be planting one type of crop,” She said.
With the change in climate, it calls for farmers to have knowledge on the type of crops they are planting and the timings for planting.
“We should embrace sustainable agricultural practices like ripping for better yields even when we do not have enough rains. Its calls for us farmers to be proactive and be on the lookout for weather information because the government always updates us on the weather situations each and every year; they measure how the rains are and tell us if there will be enough rains or not, they say if the rains are coming early or late.
Euphrasia added that the change in climate is teaching farmers a lot of things; its teaching the farmers on the importance of planting a diversity of crops e.g groundnuts, beans which are good sources of nutrition and also early maturing.
“It has reminded us that even with little rains we can still plant early maturing crops like other sorghum varieties which take a period of three months instead of six months mature thereby ensuring our food security at household levels,” She said.
