Bardere Farm Project

Bardera farm project was established in 15/11/2003 at Hilfato area30 km away from the town on the left bank of the south down Stream of Juba River. The farm size is 40 ha of irrigable land. When the farm was transferred to be HIRDA’s had 4 maturely grown mango trees and almost 15 ha being grown with maize. It has also two small water pumps of one Rocket Anil and 1 Yanmar respectively having a 100mm 80 mm water pipe size and various hand tools.

According to the project plan the area that to be grown was 20 hectares with four main crops respectively five hectares, ( 5ha of maize, 5 ha of sesame, 5ha of onions and 5 ha of tobacco).
When the farm was established, there were already about 15 ha cultivated with maize at early stage of development and before the beginning of the rains it was possible to conduct land preparation and planting of only 5 hectares of sesame.

The rainfall has started intensively on 25/11/2003 and continued until 10/12/2003 causing serious flood damages to many farms in Bardheere district including HIRDA’s farm where the rains have destroyed the entire sesame crop and two hectares of the maize crop. The flood water remained stand still for quite some time (more than three weeks) in the field and the roads access was fully hampered. So the previously given plans of farm activities schedule for Der season from October 2003 to March 2004 was subject to some inevitable delays and modifications to go with the local circumstances as shown in the following annex table 1:

As the flood continued to recede, it was started repeating to undertake the field preparation and growing again the cleared areas with sesame crop in order to replace to the destroyed ones, while planting tobacco, in the period between 22-28/2003, and then onions in the remnant uncultivated areas. Each one of these crops was used to cover for a plot size of about 5 hectares. Now these crops are still remaining under development condition and are receiving the common farm management operations such as weeding, irrigation and control of pests until reaching full maturity and crop harvesting is expected in the next April 2004.

It is worth mentioning that planting of 150 banana suckers (banana plants) was introduced in January by the farm managers in the field. This was intended to be utilized for possible future expansion of the crop in the farm as it is an economically important cash crop. Also a small plot was grown with watermelon in order to diversify the crops and to ensure to gain benefits.

By the end of second week of January 2004 it was conducted harvesting and post-harvesting works such as threshing and packaging of the maize crop which are under way and close to completion.