You're Invited: A Conservation Agriculture "Virtual" Field Workshop in Brazil - starts SUNDAY July 10, 2011

posted on behalf of Jeff Brez

Please join Project Breadbasket, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the Brazilian No-Till Federation (FEBRAPDP), EMATER, the LaGuardia Foundation and other partners on a six-day "South-South learning journey" to Parana State to support scaling up of conservation agriculture (CA) among smallholders in Africa. My name is Jeff - responsible for environment and climate learning at IFAD - and I'll be your virtual classmate, linking you directly to the participants.


We will share our daily activities with you each day via blog posts with photos, video interviews and video demonstrations (technology permitting). We hope you will share your experiences, expertise and feedback via social media along the way. Don't be shy - send us your questions!

How can you participate virtually? You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and on this blog. You can either post your comments here on the blog, or send them as a tweet to @IFADnews (#ENRM). Last but not least you can also post your comment on our Facebook page.

I'll do my best to share the perspectives of the participants - from Brazil, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Among the contributors to the workshop we also find technical experts from Brazil (FEBRAPDP, EMBRAPA and the Parana State agricultural agency IAPAR). The objective is ambitious: explore how to scale up CA approaches to benefit over 420,000 smallholders in Africa.

So, between now and Sunday the 10^th July (Day 1 of our reporting back to you) send us your comments and questions - feel free to be very specific. We also appreciate if you will share with us below good links on conservation agriculture (a favorite publication, paper or article). You can comment in FRANÇAIS, ESPAÑOL, and PORTUGUÊS, as well as ENGLISH. We are looking forward to your active participation in this exciting South-South cooperation initiative.

Conservation farming in zambia draft paper

View more documents from IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development.

More background information:

Project Breadbasket Workshop Concept Note

AGRA's 5 Principles of Conservation Agriculture

IFAD Conservation agriculture

FAO Conservation agriculture

Thank you also to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support!