Agriculture Cluster Development Project

  Sustainable Land Management (SLM) strategies and practices enable farmers and communities to adapt, as well as become more resilient, to climate change by increasing food production, conserving soil and water, enhancing food security and restoring productive natural resources. SLM refers to the adoption of land use systems that, through appropriate management practices, enables land users to maximize economic and social benefits from the land while maintaining or enhancing ecological support functions of land resources. In most of the agricultural production zones, the soils are old with little mineral nutrient reserves. Many cases where phosphorus, potassium and calcium, are below critical levels, it means that there is: •          a decrease in fallow periods due to increased pressure on land •          those under ‘fallow’ are in poor state [abandoned rather than deliberate fallow] •          rain-fed agriculture •          continuous cultivation without fertility

 The e-Voucher subsidy scheme   targets farmers, farmers’ associations,  farmer cooperatives (Area-based Commodity Enterprises), and other stakeholders along the value chain. The Agriculture Cluster Development Project aims to work with approximately 300 Area-based Commodity Cooperative Enterprises representing about 3,000 Rural Producer Organizations. These rural producer organizations represent about 450,000 farming households, of which 180,000 are producers of maize (50 percent of these also produce beans), 95,000 are producers of beans, 40,000 are producers of rain fed upland and rain fed lowland rice, 110,000 are producers of Robusta and Arabica coffee, and 25,000 are producers of cassava. How do farm households participate in the e-Voucher subsidy scheme ? For farm households, support takes the form of a time-bound partial and diminishing matching grant (subsidy) to help finance the purchase of key inputs and on-farm storage. Participating households pay for a portion of the