MAL Livestock officers attended the workshop of developing the Livestock module for the MAL staff training manual.
SIART/MAL (Honiara)- The Solomon Islands Agriculture and Rural Transformation Project supported the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock by conducting three stakeholders’ workshops in developing the training manual in the past two weeks at the Faculty of Agriculture Forestry and Fishery, Science and conference room, Solomon Islands National University, Kukum Campus.
John Tatalo, the SIART Institutional Capacity Building officer said the series of the workshops SIART PMU organized with the MAL officers and market access stakeholders was to identify the important training areas: Based on training objectives and proposed content of trainings approved by MAL. The training curriculum and content which reflects the needs outlined in the Capacity Building chapter of the SIART project implementation manual and the leaning needs of MAL. This includes both small livestock and Crop commodities. Consultation with stakeholders who deal with agri-food commodities market access is still in the process to develop an agricultural training manual which would help facilitate market access to local commodities targeting import substitution and exports.
MAL needs a cohesive documented information training manual to guide the staff and Community Resources persons to train the farmers.
“There is a need for a systematic training within MAL to guide the officers through the agricultural extension services program in reaching our farmers,” he said. “The manual will form a basis for the capacity development of the MAL staff, Community resources persons in offering consistent training contents to our livestock and crop farmers.”
He added that the training manual will be developed into two levels: First, the manual will be developed for MAL staff and CRPs as trainers to use their guide while the manual content will be developed further into simpler and user friendly format such as worksheets, leaflets, posters and video clips to focus on the practical application of the training to the farmers.
The outcome of the training manual development process will be to equip the agricultural extension services officers to be effective in building the farmers capacity increasing the production of the identified crop and livestock commodities which are adequate for the market access in exports, import- substitution, and local markets.
Tatalo said that is very important to have a collective effort of agri-food stakeholders to perform their functions to improve the agri-food value chains development and to enable market access for our agricultural sector developments.
For more information, contact the SIART Project Communication officer, NOligao@mal.gov.sb or Office telephone: 20003.
A workshop with the MAL Extension Service Department on crops module development for the MAL staff training manual.
Joseph Ialebe, Livestock Department’s Deputy Director during the Livestock module development workshop.
MAL Press