From Mozambique to Woodstock

Wednesday, 29 July 2015 12:46

Managers for the Agriculture Research Stations in Mozambique are in Woodstock this week for a training conference.

WOODSTOCK - A Woodstock based company, Agricon International is hosting 12 men from Mozambique who are in charge of their country's agriculture research stations.

The group is in Woodstock to learn management techniques with a focus on timeliness and the need to plan ahead so you never have down time. Director of International Programs with Agricon Hannibal Muhtar tells Heart FM they are providing the men with training and practices that they can take home with them to Mozambique.

"They will learn some management tools that enable them to improve the quality of the results that they get at the research stations, for instance how to do things more efficiently, sometimes they don't have resources, how can they go around doing the work with fewer resources or improving on what they have."

Muhtar tells Heart FM Agricon recently did a big design project in Mozambique and the country asked Agricon to organize a workshop for the managers so they can be trained to use the new equipment.

"The reason to bring them over here is not to overwhelm them with our technology, but to focus on, doesn't matter the technology, if you have proper principles in place that enable you to understand what needs to take place, so you can do it on a low level technology but still the principles are the same."

The managers spend their mornings learning in a classroom type setting and then in the afternoon they visit various farms in Oxford County to get some first hand experience. Muhtar says the men get to ask questions and learn first hand while they are at the farms.

"In one case they asked a farmer yesterday, so we know in the winter time we have four or five months of snow or inclement weather and what do you do during those months and the man said well this is the time we focus on maintaining our equipment and fix our equipment so they know that he will work during winter time so when spring time comes and it is time to plant everything is ready."