Training Report: Training of trainers and farmers’ training on validated sweetpotato silage making and use in Masaka and Kamuli districts.

European UnionInternational Fund for Agricultural Developmen

Opportunities for feeding forages to pigs in Uganda

Pigs can play an important role in risk diversification and livelihood security of many smallholder and poor households in Uganda. Women and youth/children provide most of the pigproduction labour, especially for forage collection, feeding and watering; and they are responsible for about 90% of pigs produced in Uganda. In the smallholder production systems practised both in rural and peri-urban areas, a variety of forage species are traditionally used for pig feeding, the majority of them being gathered for several hours every day. Overall, there is an overreliance on feeding crop residues, ‘weeds’ and forages both through collection and scavenging/ tethering, usually not meeting the nutritional requirements of pigs, which results in slow growth rates. Data on feeding pigs in Uganda were collected during focus group discussions and key informant interviews in three districts, Masaka, Mukono and Kamuli, during the years 2013–2014. In Uganda, there has been generally limited research on pigs and pig systems, while forage research has traditionally focused on feeding ruminants. A comprehensive literature review on feeding forages to pigs in the tropics revealed that it is mainly animal nutritionists who concern themselves with nutritional effects of forages on the animals and their suitability as pig feeds; aspects of integrating cultivated forages into crop-livestock production systems, labour requirements, gender issues, and economic returns are essentially not considered. Despite the widely recognised constraint of insufficient animal feeds, especially during dry seasons, adoption of cultivated forages in the tropics has been generally slow, and hindering factors have not been fully understood. Some cultivated forages show nutritional attributes suitable for pigs, technically making them an option to supplement pigs with farm-grown forages instead of purchased concentrates. A paradox of feeding forages to pigs in Uganda has been identified, though, that suggests a decreasing use potential of forages along a gradient from extensive (mostly rural) to intensive (more urban) smallholder systems, whereas CIAT’s Tropical Forages Program presumes an increasing forage adoption potential along a gradient from subsistence- to marketoriented smallholder systems. Investigating this paradox carefully may help better understand reasons and conditions of smallholders under which cultivated forages may be adopted or not

Sweetpotato silage manual for smallholder farmers.

This sweetpotato silage manual is made to benefit farmers and business entrepreneurs that would want to engage in sweetpotato silage making, marketing and use. It is based on practical experiences that were gained from studies and experiments conducted in Uganda by the International Potato Centre (CIP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in collaboration with other partners between 2014 and 2016. The manual focused on the piggery enterprise and covers five key aspects: importance of sweetpotato in small-scale farming systems, sweetpotato establishment and management, pig production in Uganda, sweetpotato as a feed resource for pigs, sweetpotato silage production. It is expected that the manual will give the reader incites for sweetpotato production and making sweetpotato silage to address feeding constraints

Napier Stunt and Smut Resistance Project: key achievements and outputs in Uganda

A presentation prepared by J. Kabirizi to the ASARECA/ILRI Workshop on Mitigating the Impact of Napier Grass Smut and Stunt Diseases, Addis Ababa, June 2-3, 2010

Napier stunt and smut diseases in Uganda

A poster showing research findings about Napier stunt and smut in Uganda