Technical professionals from the Namibian Agronomic Board (NAB) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Water, and Land Reform participated in a training workshop on crop yield estimation that was held at the University of Namibia (UNAM).
The workshop was held earlier this month at the Katima Mulilo Campus in the Zambezi Region to give field workers the scientific approaches and practical abilities they need to forecast the yields of typical cereal and vegetable crops grown in the area.
According to UNAM, 14 participants in total learned important ideas and techniques for estimating crop yields during the course of the 4-day program.
“Topics covered included, relevance and use of statistics in crop production, sampling techniques, sampling and estimation methods for crop statistics, methods for measuring crop area, methods for measuring crop yield, area and yield estimation,” added the University.
UNAM stated that yield estimations are critical for NAB’s ineffective border control, import and export management, and ensuring food availability in the country.
“The participants also had ample time to practice some of these procedures under farm field conditions where practical challenges were clarified to increase comprehension and competence,” emphasised.
The participants also narrated that it was always a challenge for them to quantitatively forecast local crop yields due to the lack of technical capacity, while workshop facilitators on the other hand indicated that the University has recently received numerous requests for technical training services on crop production, experimental design, data collection, and agricultural survey studies.
Furthermore, the facilitators said that the training was very successful and expressed appreciation to the trainees for their active participation as well as to the farmers who volunteered to offer their crop fields for practical activities.
The workshop was facilitated by Dr Simon K. Awala an Agronomist from the Department of Crop Production and Agricultural Technologies and Kudakwashe Hove a Biostatistician from the Department of Wildlife Management and Tourism at UNAM.
