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Soya beans on eradicating poverty and improving hygiene
2006-09-22 08:43:27
By Gideon Kivanda of SAUT
The recent exhibition by private and public universities in the country, yielded positive results as it brought to the fore some products hardly known to the public.
The exhibition was also used by the participating universities to inform the public about their activities, history, achievements and future goals.
Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) was among them. Its major product at the exhibition was one of the leguminous crops - soya beans.
Among the leguminous crops consumed mostly in the country is beans. This has been so probably because the local populace does not know the importance and benefits of growing soya beans.
According to the Assistant Professor of Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Department of Food Science and Technology, Henry Laswai, his department has introduced means that would simplify work for farmers who would prefer to grow soya beans.
He says that among the leguminous crops, soya beans has large amounts of protein and calcium than other leguminous crops.
Therefore, instead of using others crops, for example, in times of scarcity, soya beans could provide the best dish.
Moreover, soya beans can be used commercially because once processed it can be sold just like other crops like sorghum, ordinary beans, groundnuts etc.
The soya beans growing project, according to Laswai, was targeted at processing, utilisation and marketing of the crop for poverty reduction and improvement of the hygienic environment in Morogoro Region. Later on, the project changed into a national one.
To make the project sustainable, different strategies were established within areas seen to have better environment for soya beans production.
These included a baseline survey to understand food and the nutritional situation in Morogoro Region. The survey was carried out in different districts of Morogoro region, namely, Morogoro Urban and Rural, Kilosa and Mvomelo.
The second phase was aimed at mobilising the people on the importance of the crop. Underscoring the importance of this move, different varieties of soya seeds were provided to the farmers so that they could test them.
Due to the test, TGX-8E performed better for those districts, so the University established contact farmers to ensure constant supply of the seed. During the first year, 30 farmers were established in every village, 60 farmers in the second and third year.
After growing, they went on to research on how much people were harvesting. Due to lack of proper machinery for dehulling farmers lost between 20 and 25 per cent of the amount they were harvesting so they now prefer using the coffee pulping machine.
Professor Laswai came with the idea of a dehurring machine that could minimise the losses of crops that farmers had previously suffered.
Dehulling machine will help farmers to have soya beans for eating as well as selling so that they can get some money to keep for their families.
Also, the growing of soya beans will be associated with the MKUKUTA programme for poverty eradication by enabling farmers to move from eating up to saving something for sale.
After ensuring that soya beans is being grown in the greater part of Morogoro they went on to educate farmers on the various ways of using soya beans.
Soya can be used to prepare thin and thick porridge, buns after mixing it with wheat flour. It can also be used to make coffee and milk.
Finally, they came to inform the public about the project. Farmers day, Nanenane, workshops and the University’s exhibition were strategic ways to inform Tanzanians about the benefits of soya beans.
Many people participated in these events and they helped in disseminating information.
The project is supported by NORAD in cooperation with the Tanzanian Government with the aim of poverty eradication and improvement of health.
For this reason, Tanzanians are advised to grow soya beans so that they can keep their bodies healthy as well as earn some money to improve their economies.
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